Unlocking born-digital literary heritage: The case of the Herman de Coninck floppy disks

Datasets produced in the context of the research scenario ‘Unlocking born-digital literary heritage: the case of the Herman de Coninck floppy disks’ in CLARIAH-VL. The aim of the research scenario was to partially ‘unlock’ the digital files stored on the floppy disks in Herman de Coninck's archive in the collection of the Letterenhuis (Antwerp) by providing insights into their contents, grouping related files and linking the files with related files in the paper archive.

Two datasets are provided: a list of all the persons and places mentioned in the files stored on the floppy disks (excluding De Coninck’s personal communication) and a list of documents in De Coninck's archive related to the “De vliegende keeper”-columns. The list of persons and places alphabetically lists all the persons and places identified in the files using NER, their frequencies and the file in which this person or place appears (note that the list may still contain errors and duplicates). The list with "De vliegende keeper"-columns lists the title of the column and indicates the file on the floppy disks that holds a version of this column, whether a version of this column is can be found as printout or as newspaper clipping in the paper archive (C33941/323, C33941/324, C33941/325) and on which page of the collection of essays De vliegende keeper (1995) this essay appears.

The blog posts of this research scenario on CLARIAH-VL's website provide more information on the creation of the datasets.

After approval, the files from the floppy disks (C339941/74) can be accessed at the Letterenhuis for further research.