Knowledge Aggregator Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Structuring, Standardising and Providing Research Data from Medieval and Early Modern Material and Written Sources
Based on the extensive data collections of the research projects Deutsche Inschriften (German Inscriptions) and Germania Sacra, the project “Knowledge Aggregator for the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period” (WIAG) is a reliable knowledge base for medieval and early modern studies.
The development of the WIAG platform was funded from January 2020 to April 2023 by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture through the Niedersächsisches Vorab programme of the Volkswagen Foundation. The data corpus includes core entities for the research field, such as persons, ecclesiastical institutions, objects, and places, as well as typifying information (object types, functions such as offices, graphical symbols such as coats of arms, etc.).
Designed as a collaborative platform, WIAG is a continuously growing resource that has been expanded with scholarly data from research projects and external researchers. WIAG serves as a demonstrative example of how heterogeneous and otherwise difficult-to-organise collections can be aggregated according to scholarly standards. A number of established research projects have been engaged as cooperation partners to integrate subject-specific data. WIAG combines the advantages of an open, collaboratively developed data collection with the quality standards of controlled authority data.
WIAG forms a data corpus that is only to a very limited extent covered by major authority data providers such as the German National Library (GND) and open knowledge collections such as Wikidata. By employing FAIR data standards, including unique identifiers and standardized interfaces, domain-specific data are made interoperable both across disciplines and internationally. WIAG is sustainably curated within the infrastructure of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony. Further information can be found in the project application (in German).
Kontakt
Niedersächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften
zu Göttingen
Forschungsprojekt WIAG
Koordination Germania Sacra, Bärbel Kröger
Geiststraße 10
D-37073 Göttingen