Project

Sites of (re)Collection: Historical GIS and Statistical Learning for Danish Folklore

Program

ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowships

Department

Scandinavian Section and Asian Languages and Cultures

Abstract

This project focuses on the Evald Tang Kristensen collection, the world’s largest folklore collection produced by an individual. It provides a rich navigational interface that allows users to make use of advanced GIS, statistical learning, and text-corpus visualization tools. This enables a “thick” approach to archival materials through historical mapping, pattern discovery, and information navigation. A proof of concept, using five storytellers and sixteen collection trips as a test corpus, was completed this year. This expands on the pilot in two ways: incorporating more materials into the database, effectively covering the entire collection; and increasing the number of study tools to include more advanced GIS functions, statistical learners, and text-corpus visualization.