Scholars of the early modern period have long been interested in networks. Networks of scholarly and literary exchange, international trade, kinship, and patronage have been but a few of the many fruitful and durable areas of study. Recent and ongoing digital humanities projects are now considering such networks with fresh approaches and at larger and larger scales. At the heart of many of these digital projects are \u201cnetwork ontologies\u201d\u2014that is, networks of meaningful relationships that offer implied or explicit answers to the question, \u201cWhat was there in the early modern world?\u201d<\/p>\n
The starting points were the early modernists\u2019 existing research practices on the one hand, and the data practices currently employed by the four projects\u2014Mapping the Republic of Letters<\/a>, Itinera<\/a>, Six Degrees of Francis Bacon<\/a>, and Manner of Belonging<\/a>\u2014on the other.\u00a0Spanning the workshop\u2019s one and a half days, three blocs of sessions will aim to develop the prototype metadata standard to support ongoing collaborative digital research in early modern networks.<\/p>\n In Friday morning\u2019s session, open to all without preregistration, project leaders from the four participating digital humanities network projects introduced the successes and struggles found within their current and proposed network data models, leaving room also for conversation and questions about the issues being raised within each project and across projects.<\/p>\n In Friday afternoon\u2019s working session, pre-registered participants\u00a0explored\u00a0the limits of existing data models and generated further questions. Informed by participants\u2019 individual and discipline-specific research agendas, by \u201cthick descriptions\u201d of early modern networks, and by the morning\u2019s presentations, participant working groups identified areas for subsequent focus.<\/p>\n Saturday morning\u2019s session was\u00a0open to those who participated in the working groups on Friday, and was an opportunity to produce tangible research outcomes from the workshop, including a prototype network ontology structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scholars of the early modern period have long been interested in networks. Networks of scholarly and literary exchange, international trade, kinship, and patronage have been but a few of the many fruitful and durable areas of study. Recent and ongoing digital humanities projects are now considering such networks with fresh approaches and at larger and larger scales. At the heart…<\/p>\n