Rossana Scebba
(IRES/LIDAM, UCLouvain)
will give a presentation on
Integrating library and prosopographical data in the publication network of the Old University of Louvain
Abstract : The present work strives to offer an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of academic communities as real-world networks, using the Old University of Louvain as case study. Building upon the metadata of the Collectio Academica Antiqua, we describe, analyze, and visualize the network behind these rare books of the premodern University of Louvain held in the collections of the two Louvain libraries. We process the metadata records from their original MARC21 XML format and perform data-cleaning techniques to retrieve the names and personal information of the historical figures who contributed to the collection under various roles. Then, we use Social Network Analysis to visualize the web of relationships among these individuals, based on shared book collaborations. We propose a novel rolling-window approach to compute time-consistent network metrics and study the evolution of the network and the role of its components, i.e., prominent figures in the history of the University. Lastly, focusing on the coauthors’ network, we introduce an innovative interpretation of Louvain scholars’ social presence, and compare it to an extant proxy of human capital.