Das Wissensnetz der Frühen Neuzeit. Von der virtuellen Bibliothek zur virtuellen Enzyklopädie

Abstract

At first glance the project of a Virtual Encyclopedia of the Early Modern Period might appear superfluous: there are a number of printed reference books on the topic available. Among the particularly useful ones we find the “Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World” (Scribner's Sons) and the “Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit” (Metzler). Nevertheless, there is room for innovation. The Heidelberg Project “The Knowledge Map of the Early Modern Period” brought together reference books of the Early Modern Period with the CAMENA text database in a single data base in order to put the data collected to use through a text mining procedure developed by the Institute for Computer Science of Leipzig University. The results are presented in form of a list of contexts for each lemma. They can furthermore be visualized as graphs, giving an intuitive picture of a knowledge map. By including a corpus of ancient texts, epistemic changes in the early modern period can be made visible. This way a Virtual Encyclopaedia that primarily serves the needs of scholars but also a wider audience is being developed.