The Penn Libraries is pleased to announce that a team of humanities scholars and information scientists that includes Lynn Ransom, curator of programs at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, has been awarded a 2017 Digging into Data Challenge grant funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities (T-AP).

Since its inception in 2009, the Digging into Data Challenge program has helped to spark new research avenues for the humanities and social sciences utilizing large-scale, computational methods and analysis to demonstrate how cutting-edge big data techniques can be used to investigate a wide range of research questions across the humanities and social sciences.

“Mapping Manuscript Migrations” is a two-year, $710,000 collaboration led by the Oxford e-Research Centre together with the Bodleian Libraries, the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT), the Semantic Computing Group at Aalto University, Helsinki, and Penn Libraries.

This project will bring together more than 500,000 records from key databases, including the Penn Libraries’ Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts and the Medium database from the IRHT. For the first time, researchers, curators and the community will be able to explore this vast body of data, visualizing the travels of manuscripts over many centuries and navigating the network of connections between people, institutions, and places involved in their history. According to Ms. Ransom, the Digging into Data program “presents an exciting opportunity for the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts to participate in and contribute to advancing new research possibilities for the study of manuscripts across time and geographies at an international level.”

The T-AP Digging into Data Challenge is sponsored by research funding organizations from 11 nations, organized under the auspices of “T-AP,” the Trans-Atlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities. T-AP is an unprecedented collaboration between key humanities and social science funders and facilitators from South America, North America and Europe. T-AP aims to enhance the ability of funders, research organizations and researchers to engage in transnational dialogue and collaboration. The Penn Libraries’ contribution to the Digging into Data Challenge is supported by the Institute for Museum and Library Services.