The project aims to map long-term developments in Dutch public discourse, especially in religion. An analysis of book titles and connected metadata from multiple other data sources will deliver a bottom-up reconstruction of trends and changes in thematization. To do so, a harmonized and curated dataset will be created containing biographical information of all Dutch Protestant Ministers from 1500 to 2000. This biographical database, which we named CLERUS - Database Dutch Reformed Clergy, will be mapped with book titles from the Royal Library (i.e., Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN) dataset and the (Nederlandse Bibliografie Totaal (NBT)).
The structured and curated dataset with careers of Dutch Protestant ministers from 1500 until 2000 will be created out of a series of semi-structured data sources that are the result of 30 years of archival historical research. This process is considered data harmonization and entails the modeling of the data structure and a series of processing steps to translate the data from one format/structure to another. In addition, the dataset will be fully curated by a group of historical data experts. These activities result in the new dataset CLERUS - Database Dutch Reformed Clergy which is accompanied by an extensive data model allowing it to be mapped with various other data sources like the Biography portal.
The harmonized dataset CLERUS is initially processed and stored as a traditional relational database. Yet, in order to make the dataset available as linked data, a mapping towards LOD will be published as part of the project as well. To link book title data with CLERUS, a mapping with the Royal Library's Linked Data (SPARQL) endpoint will be generated, after which a series of explorative analyses will be shared.
