Keynote Lecture by Dr. Joëlle Weis

The Symposium

The international symposium ‘Early Modern Private Libraries as Sites of Knowledge Construction and Circulation’ is organised by Early Career Researcher Frank Ejby Poulsen, holder of a María Zambrano grant for the attraction of international talents to Spain funded by NextGenerationEU and ‘Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia Gobierno de España'.

‘More for show than for use’? Clearing up Prejudices through Digital Reconstruction of Princesses’ Libraries of the Seventeenth Century.
Dr. Joëlle Weis

The keynote gives insight into a long-term research project on the private libraries of 18th-century German princesses. More than 100 of these private libraries are preserved in one form or another until today and they give spectactular insights into their knowledge practices and knowledge organisation. his project aims to create a platform that acts as a repository for women’s libraries from the 18th century, facilitating virtual reconstructions of these collections to provide a thorough understanding of their contents and functions. Utilizing Linked Open Data, the project seeks to interconnect these collections within a Wikibase, enabling comparative analyses. The goal is to get an impression of how the libraries were actually used and to gain an understanding of their social, epistemic and dynastic-representative functions. The presentation will reflect on methodological issues as well as discuss the benefit of choosing an approach of digital library reconstruction, especially in the still underresearched field of women’s book history.