On 6 and 7 November 2017 researchers from all over the world gathered in Linz, Austria, for the second conference on Biographical Data in a Digital World. The conference included 16 oral presentations and 10 poster presentations. These proceedings contain 13 fully reviewed papers that are based on the presentations given during this event. munity has formed among people working on biographical data, as is evidenced by workshops on biographical data in Krakow (DH2016, 11 July), Amsterdam (22 May 2017) and Vienna (published in the Europa baut auf Biographien volume 3) in between the two conferences. The collaboration has furthermore led to the creation of the DARIAHEU working group ”Analysing and Linking Biographical Data”. Research on 'Biographical Data' is still very much alive. As long as this is the case we fully intend to continue the Biographical Data in a Digital World conference series, which is why we are pleased to announce that the organization of the 2019 edition is already on its way.
Plutarch (46-120 AD) is considered to be the father of the genre of ‘Biography’. For him writing a biography was almost a spiritual journey: ‘For the result is like nothing else than daily living and associating together, when I receive and welcome each subject of my history in turn as my guest, [...] and select from his career what is most important and most beautiful to know’.1 Plutarch wrote about famous men, rulers like Alexander the Great, and compared them to other rulers. This focus on ‘great men’ remained dominant in biographers’ works, arguably to this very day. Fortunately there have been many developments and initiatives that focus on other kinds of people as well. Scholars started to draw up group portraits, studied history through the eyes of the common person, and increasingly paid attention to women and minorities. The rise of the computer in the twentieth century led to a further increase of biographies on a wider variety of people. Databases were used to store ‘biographical data’, statistical analyses became available through advanced programs, and charts and graphs on groups of people were created more easily. A lot of ‘biographical data’ on a wide variety of people became more easily available: famous people on Wikipedia, genealogical data on private websites, interviews, online biographical dictionaries, and scanned primary source material such as death registers and marriage certificates. Academics worldwide worked on how to mine, navigate, model and analyze all these biographical data, or how to extrapolate even more biographical data from digitized texts. The Biographical Data in a Digital World conference was created as a platform to showcase, discuss and publish the latest research on biographical data.
The Biographical Data in a Digital World conference has taken us from Amsterdam (9 April 2015) to Linz (6-7 November 2017) for its second edition, organized by a team from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the framework of the APIS project.2 Already it seems that a tight com1Plutarch, The Life of Timoleon, introduction, translated by Bernadotte Perrin 2https://www.oeaw.ac.at/de/acdh/projects/apis/ 3
The Proceedings of the first Biographical Data in a Digital World conference followed shortly after the Amsterdam conference. For the 2017 edition we decided to take a slightly different approach. Instead of asking for papers before the Conference, we only asked for abstracts. Everyone who had something to say on the topic of biographical data would be welcome to give a (poster) presentation. After the conference, an invitation to submit a full paper was sent out to everyone who had given a presentation, which would undergo the regular procedure of a single blind peer review process. In the end we accepted 13 papers for the 2017 Proceedings.
We grouped these papers in four categories: (i) Bringing Biographical Data Online (3 papers), (ii) Biographical Data and Historical Research (3 papers), (iii) Group Portraits and Networks (4 papers) and (iv) Visualization and Representation (3 papers).
We believe these papers provide a rich panorama of research on biographical data: best practices to bring biographical data online; how to use these data to address biographical and historical research questions; how to visualize, model and store these data; and finally, more than in the previous edition, also how to work together efficiently on these topics.
We continue to hope that these proceedings will inspire more research on biographical data in a digital world.
3http://www.newacademicpress.at/gesamtverzeichnis/unkategorisiert/europabaut-auf-biographien/
Antske Fokkens, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Ronald Sluijter, Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands Paul Arthur, Edith Cowan University Australia Eveline Wandl-Vogt, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Eveline Wandl-Vogt (Chair of Organization), Austrian Academy of Sciences Barbara Piringer (Conference Secretary 08.2017-) Caitlin Gura (Conference Secretary -08.2017) Andreas Bauer, Ars Electronica Center Michaela Wimplinger, Ars Electronica Center
Thierry Declerck, Deutsches Forschungszentrum fu¨ r Ku¨ nstliche Intelligenz, Saarbru¨ cken Ichiro Fujinaga, McGill University, Montreal Lonneke Geerlings, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Eero Hyvo¨ nen, Aalto University, Helsinki Filip, Ilievski, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Anders Ingram, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Marten Du¨ ring, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) Sarah Herbe, University of Salzburg Ba¨rbel Kro¨ ger, Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Go¨ ttingen Petri Leskinen, Aalto University, Helsinki Eetu Ma¨kela¨, Aalto University, Helsinki Stella Markantonatou, Institute for Language and Speech Processing / Athena RIC, Athens Katharina Prager, Vienna University Matthias Schlo¨ gl, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Pia Sommerauer, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Chantal van Son, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Minna Tamper, Aalto University, Helsinki Christophe Verbruggen, Ghent University Joris van Zundert, Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, Amsterdam