=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2364/33_paper
|storemode=property
|title=Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2364/33_paper.pdf
|volume=Vol-2364
|authors=Annika Rockenberger,Mette Witting, Ellen Nessheim Wiger,Marianne Paasche,Ola Søndenå,Hilde Bøe,Evelyn Irene Thor,Ove Joralf Wolden,Philipp Conzett
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/dhn/RockenbergerWWP19
}}
==Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2364/33_paper.pdf
Norwegian Correspondences and
Linked Open Data
Annika Rockenberger1[0000−0001−9515−8262] , Ellen Nessheim Wiger1 , Mette
Refslund Witting1 , Hilde Bøe2[0000−0002−2142−7287] , Evelyn Irene Thor3 , Ove
Wolden3 , Marianne Paasche4 , Ola Søndenå4 , and Philipp
Conzett5[0000−0002−6754−7911]
1
National Library of Norway
annika.rockenberger@nb.no
ellen.wiger@nb.no
Mette.witting@nb.no
2
The Munch Museum
hilde.boe@munchmuseet.no
3
Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Library
evelyn.thor@ntnu.no
ove.wolden@ntnu.no
4
University of Bergen Library
Marianne.Paasche@uib.no
ola.sondena@uib.no
5
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
philipp.conzett@uit.no
Abstract. The project Norwegian Correspondences aims to link indi-
vidual letters and other correspondence media not only to each other but
to correspondences across all of Norway, Europe and beyond. It uses the
CorrespSearch infrastructure, which employs Linked Open Data stan-
dards. Correspondence metadata from digitized letters, digital as well as
printed scholarly editions is delivered in the Correspondence Metatdata
Interchange Format (CMIF). Via the CorrespSearch web interface, data
can be easily searched—or queried via an open API.
Keywords: Correspondence · Cultural Heritage Institutions · Linked
Open Data · Collaboration.
1 About the Project
The National Library of Norway has a substantial amount of private historical
correspondences in its holdings,6 some of them are edited and published, either
in printed editions or in digital form. In addition, other Norwegian cultural her-
itage institutions, like the Munch Museum, but also the university libraries of
6
The manuscript catalogue contains almost 200.000 individual letters from as early
as 1378 to quite recent material.
366 A. Rockenberger et al.
The Arctic University of Norway and the University of Bergen7 and the Norwe-
gian University of Science and Technology University Library, hold significant
collections of letters and are continually preparing digital editions of letters and
correspondences of key figures of Norwegian public and academic life. Yet, all
these correspondence projects lead a solitary existence–hidden either in editions
of single authors or as digitized collections or individual pieces on institutional
servers.
As a dialogical genre by nature, the full potential of letters and other corre-
spondance material lies in the connection of the individuals writing and receiving
letters, postcards, and telegrams–at a specific time and from and to a specific
place. But because the collections of letters and individual pieces of a corre-
spondence are historically distributed wide and far in regards to geography and
institution, there rarely exist links between them. Thus research on correspon-
dence networks that existed in Norway, the Nordic Countries–and beyond, to
Europe and the rest of the world–as well as research on the letter as the main
means of written interpersonal communication for centuries is almost impossible.
The project Norwegian Correspondences (NorKorr, from Norwegian Norske
korrespondanser ) aims to link these individual letters and similar materials not
only to each other but to correspondences in all of Norway, Europe, and beyond
by making use of the CorrespSearch [1] infrastructure. CorrespSearch is both an
infrastructure for connecting correspondences accross editions and collections
making use of Linked Open Data (building on VIAF and GeoNames among
other openly available datasets) and a web service that aggregates specific cor-
respondence metadata from digital and printed scholarly editions. [2] These data
can be easily searched via the CorrespSearch web interface or queried via their
open API. By integrating Norwegian correspondences into the corpus of let-
ters that already exists on CorrespSearch, they will become visible as part of a
greater international network of letters and allow for a macroscopic view on the
correspondence networks that existed throughout the centuries.
2 Aims
The aim of the NorKorr project is to aggregate and provide correspondence
metadata from Norwegian editions of correspondences from different projects,
institutions and collections in a format that can be ingested by CorrespSearch.
The metadata in question are comprised of:
1. Names of writer and recipient of the letter (preferably with reference to the
Virtual International Authority File VIAF). [3]
2. A unique identifier for each letter, usually in form of a URN.
3. Optionally, the places letters were sent from and to (preferably with reference
to GeoNames). [4]
4. Optionally, the date of writing (in the ISO 8601 standard). [5]
7
The Section for Special Collections holds ca. 600 separate collections of letters.
Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data 367
The final product will be a large set of metadata for Norwegian correspondences
under a Creative Commons 4.0 License in the Correspondence Metadata In-
terchange Format (CMIF) [6] and an open workflow for (semi-)automatically
creating and delivering CMIF-compliant correspondence metadata from future
editions to the CorrespSearch web service.
In addition to aggregating the metadata from digital and printed editions,
NorKorr aims to incorporate all digitized correspondence material. This means
that all manuscript and private archive collections throughout Norway which
have undergone or will undergo digitization and assign individual URNs to each
letter together with a minimum of metadata (often derived from manuscript
catalogues) will be interconnected. [7] At the present, CorrespSearch doesn’t in-
corporate material that is not edited in either digital or printed format. NorKorr
will, however, collect all correspondence metadata regardless and map it on the
CMIF standard using the URNs as persistant identifiers for individual letters. It
will thus be possible to use the existing infrastructure that CorrespSearch pro-
vides to connect material in almost all forms: scholarly edited, printed or digital,
and digitized.
We see this expansion to be an important step towards making digital col-
lections accessible and searchable cross-institutionally, a feature that is usually
prevented by mutually incommensurable in-house solutions regarding encoding
standards, cataloguing methods and metadata standards. In addition, because
it is commonly only a small and often strongly canonised selection of authors,
musicians, artists and academics whose letters are deemed worthy of a scholarly
edition, the picture we have of Norwegian correspondence networks and Nor-
wegian cultural contacts with the other Nordic countries and the rest of the
world is strongly biased and non-representative. NorKorr is able to include cor-
respondence material regardless of language, time period, social class, gender,
and nationality.
3 Status Quo
3.1 Scope
We present a collaboratively created poster where we focus on five cases of corre-
spondence collections at Norwegian cultural heritage institutions. For the cases,
we decided to be as diverse and multifaceted as possible. We will describe the
collections of letters of each contributing institution and the specific challenges
each of these collections poses in regard to content, technology, and workflows
we have established for connecting our correspondences.
3.2 Case 1 – Letters from Norwegian Writer and Feminist Camilla
Collett (1813-1895)
The National Library of Norway has approximately 1.000 letters written by
Norwegian author Camilla Collett in its manuscript collection. More than half
368 A. Rockenberger et al.
of these letters have never been published. Collett’s handwriting is difficult to
read and there has been little research on them. We want to make the letters more
available by transcribing, encoding, and publishing them. One of the publications
is a digital edition containing ca. 50 letters written by Collett between 1841–1851.
The edition is part of the library’s source edition series NB kilder, published on
the e-book website Bokselskap. [8]
Fig. 1. Screenshot from the digital edition of Camilla Collett’s Letters
The letters are encoded in TEI P5 XML. To get the letters registered and
integrated into the CorrespSearch web service we create a CMIF file based on
the metadata already recorded in the correspDesc element in our XML files.
Fig. 2. TEI correspDesc to CMIF to CorrespSearch workflow
Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data 369
Fig. 3. Code snippet of the CMIF file for Collett’s Letters
Fig. 4. Screenshot of Collett’s Letters in the CorrespSearch environment
370 A. Rockenberger et al.
3.3 Case 2 – Letters to and from Norwegian Artist Edvard Munch
(1863-1944)
Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s correspondence with family and friends, and
with assistants, patrons, collectors, art dealers, printers, newspaper and maga-
zine editors, artists, writers, art historians, exhibition organisers, gallery owners,
shipping companies, and more, comprises more than 10.000 known letters and
letter drafts.
Among the more than 800 senders and 400 recipients currently in our online
registers [9] are well-known names that are easy to connect to authoritative
identifiers, but also many that aren’t. Among those not present in authority
registers are Munch’s family and some of the friends he most eagerly exchanged
letters with as well as other important people and institutions. The letters are
written in Norwegian, German, Danish, Swedish and French as well as the odd
occurrence of English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Czech. The letters span 70
years, from 1874 to 1944, representing hundreds of handwriting styles and many
types of letters. Metadata are partially incomplete; Munch himself didn’t always
bother adding date and place to letters, and envelopes are often missing, so
analysing the content is necessary to discover when and where a letter was
written and whereto it was sent.
Fig. 5. Screenshot from the digital edition of Edvard Munch’s Writings
Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data 371
3.4 Case 3 – Correspondence Collections from the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology University Library
The following four letter collections highlight the special collections of NTNU
University Library through their international correspondence, thus showing
their importance for adding them to a shared database.
Fig. 6. Timeline for Collections from NTNU University Library
The Royal Norwegian Society for Sciences and Letters Collection
(DKNVS) consists of 3.738 letters from the first 100 years (1760-1860) of its
existence, among them letters from Carl von Linné, Artur Schopenhauer, Henrik
Wergeland, Ivar Aasen, and many other known people who played a part in cul-
ture and science in that historical period. Thorvald Boeck (1835-1901) was a
famous collector and known for assembling what was the largest private library
of its time in Norway. The collection of 2.294 letters from 1784-1865 is diverse
and consists among others of Royal senders and other famous persons. Mikael
Heggelund Foslie (1855-1909) was one of the most important international
researchers on the systematics of non-geniculate coralline red algae at the turn
of the 19th century. From 1892 until his death he worked in Trondheim as a
curator at the Museum of the Royal Norwegian Society for Sciences and Let-
ters. His correspondence is an example of a worldwide scientific communication
and discussion and the exchange of species among scientists. This collection of
letters on botanical issues from 1884-1909 consists of 1.963 letters [10] Halfdan
Bryn (1864-1933) was a Norwegian physician and physical anthropologist. As
an army doctor, Bryn had opportunity to study men from different parts of
Norway and this inspired him to do his research. The collection consists of 830
letters from 1920-1931. [11]
3.5 Case 4 – The Letter Collections at University of Bergen Library
By focusing on three disparate collections of letters from the Section for Special
Collections, we wish to show the value and potential of linking and contextual-
izing these collections in a correspondence database.
The first collection, Ms 790 [12], actively collected by the Bank Officer O.J.
Larsen, contains ca. 2.100 letters written by Norwegian and European celebri-
ties, from Camilla Collett and Edvard Munch to Napoleon, Goethe, and Lord
372 A. Rockenberger et al.
Byron. As a curated collection, the letters defy a normal correspondence pattern.
However, within a correspondence database new links to similar collections and
related letters can elucidate the original correspondence.
The second collection, Ms 2083 [13], contains around 350 letters sent to the
physician, leprosy scientist, zoologist, and director at Bergens Museum, D.C.
Danielssen (1815-1894). This fascinating collection reveals the wide-ranging ex-
change and collaboration of scientific research and ideas between Danielssen and
scientists in Scandinavia and Europe.
Finally, Ms 2155 [14], the Mons Flæsland Collection, is a private collec-
tion, containing ca. 950 family letters from the period 1895-1930. The collection
describes everyday life, relations and destinies through three generations of de-
tailed family letters. This uniquely preserved collection is equally important as
a reflection of social conditions and class distinctions.
Fig. 7. Dated 20th of March 1844, this crossed letter from Ms 2083 was written by
Diethelm in Frauenfeld and sent to D.C. Danielssen in Bergen.
Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data 373
3.6 Case 5 – Letters from Norwegian philologist and ethnographer
Just Knud Qvigstad (1853-1957)
Just Knud Qvigstad was en expert on Sami language and culture (lappologist).
He worked as the headmaster of the Tromsø Teacher Training College, which is
one of the predecessors of UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
During several decades, Qvigstad was involved in an extensive correspon-
dence with other experts on Sami from Norway, Scandinavia, and other coun-
tries. Some of Qvigstad’s letters were digitized, transcribed, and published online
as part of the Documentation Project [15] in the early 1990s:
– Qvigstad to Magnus Olsen (1909-1956) (65 letters), held at the National
Library of Norway.
– Qvigstad to K. B. Wiklund (1891-1936) (96 letters), held at Uppsala Uni-
versity Library.
– Qvigstad to Emil N. Setälä (1887-1935) (96 letters), held at the National
Archives of Finland, prof. Setälä’s private archive.
Fig. 8. Screenshot of the early digital scholarly edition of Qvigstad’s Letters
More than 20 years have passed since the publication of these letters. The
aim of the project Qvigstad’s Correspondence 2.0 at the UiT University
374 A. Rockenberger et al.
Library is to re-edit the letters according to the requirements of a modern digital
scholarly edition, including the following enhancements:
– Providing high resolution tif/jpg facsimile images
– SGML to XML/TEI P5 conversion of the transcription
– Embedding in virtual research environment for humanities: TextGrid
– Up-to-date web interface
In addition, the letters to Sophus Bugge (1833-1907) will be included. In
collaboration with the National Library of Norway, a selection of letters will be
published as a reader-friendly edition in NB kilder.
3.7 Project Website
In the spririt of Open Science, the project NorKorr is collectively developed on
GitHub https://github.com/arockenberger/NorKorr in plain view. It is open for
collaborators from all Norwegian cultural heritage institutions (ALM sector),
the universities and other research institutions, individual researchers as well as
any organisations or individuals who hold collections of relevant correspondence
material. We document our code and share it under the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License. We build on the work shared by the CorrespSearch
developer team, the TEI Correspondence SIG and the individual researchers
and developers on GitHub and beyond.
References
1. CorrespSearch Website https://correspsearch.net/index.xql Last accessed 25 Jan-
uary 2019
2. Dumont, S.: CorrespSearch - Connecting Scholarly Editions of Letters. Journal of
the Text Encoding Initiative 10, (2016)
3. VIAF Dataset http://viaf.org/viaf/data/ Last accessed 25 January 2019
4. GeoNames https://www.geonames.org/ Last accessed 25 January 2019
5. ISO 8601 Standard https://www.iso.org/standard/40874.html Last accessed 25 Jan
2019
6. CMIF Standard Documentation https://github.com/TEI-Correspondence-
SIG/CMIF Last accessed 25 Jan 2019
7. Rettinghaus, K.: Semantic minimal retrospective digitization of edited correspon-
dence. Poster. TEI2018 International Conference, Tokyo, 9-13 Sep 2018
8. http://www.bokselskap.no/boker/collettbrev1841-51/tittelside Last accessed 25
Jan 2019
9. https:/emunch.no/ Last accessed 25 Jan 2019
10. https://www.ntnu.no/blogger/ub-spesialsamlinger/en/2017/03/23/coralline-
algae-now-soon-online/ Last accessed 25 Jan 2019
11. https://www.ntnu.no/blogger/ub-spesialsamlinger/2016/04/26/halfdan-bryns-
korrespondanse-digitalisert/ Last accessed 25 Jan 2019
12. Collection MS 0790 http://marcus.uib.no/instance/collection/ubb-ms-0790 Last
accessed 25 Jan 2019
Norwegian Correspondences and Linked Open Data 375
13. Collection MS 2083 marcus.uib.no/instance/collection/ubb-ms-2083 Last accessed
25 Jan 2019
14. Collection MS 2155 marcus.uib.no/instance/collection/ubb-ms-2155 Last accessed
25 Jan 2019
15. https://www.dokpro.uio.no/qvigstad/ombrev.html Last accessed 25 Jan 2019