Circulation of Knowledge: Reconstructing the 17th Century Dutch Republic of Letters

Session 5: Applications 2: Adding value for research MARTIN BOSSENBROEK, KB, The Hague; “Circulation of Knowledge: Reconstructing the 17th-Century Dutch Republic of Letters” The Dutch Republic fulfilled a key role in the scholarly world of 17th-century Europe due to far reaching trade relations, material wealth and its renowned tolerance. To many scholars from Europe, the Republic became a refuge - and therefore also a crucial node in an international communication network. Before the advent of scientific journals, academic exchange between scholars thrived mainly via written correspondence, i.e. letters were the backbone of immediate knowledge exchange over large geographical distances. This network did not only serve to communicate information about actual events, but also to distribute, share and discuss new ideas, discoveries and insights among scholars with common interests. The project “Circulation of Knowledge” will shed light on information dissipation and the resulting knowledge generation amongst 17th-century scholars. The correspondence of intellectuals such as René Descartes, Caspar Barlaeus, Hugo de Groot and Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens, among others, will be aggregated, enriched and be made accessible in a web-based environment, a Collaboratory. This system will enable researchers from various disciplines to prepare, revise and annotate transcriptions of letters, also in collaborative efforts. They will have the possibility to perform advanced full text searches across documents composed in different languages (mostly Latin and French), which moreover contain and consider countless spelling variations. A set of open source software tools yet to be developed will enable the users to thoroughly analyze texts and associated metadata. Next to the core text-based analysis, derived data can be visualized in unprecedented ways, uncovering social networks between scholars based on their correspondence, revealing connections between documents, as well as showing chronological and geographical features of a large corpus of transcriptions. Cross-linking with other sources leverages an information-rich and powerfully mineable research environment. Thus, the project described here allows to pose and answer novel fundamental research questions. Two case studies shall briefly illustrate how the Collaboratory will facilitate research. The first case study traces the circulation of information about an actual event within a collection of texts. The second case study tracks down how the outcomes of a particular experiment were communicated, perceived and discussed in the scholarly community. The Collaboratory will enable modern researchers to understand processes of knowledge creation and dissemination by finding the answers to research questions such as: Who was first to discuss a particular idea? With whom? During which time? In which context? Both examples given reveal the impact of communication processes on ideas and views of 17th-century scholars, which can be analyzed by the application of technologies developed – and to be developed – within the Collaboratory framework.