Digital Humanities as an Opportunity or Challenge for Researchers Dealing With Cultural Heritage and Memory?  The Project “Cultural-Intellectual Geography of the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1865-1918 – a digital vademecum” as an Example

Adrianna Sznapik, Elżbieta Nowosielska, Michał Raczkowski (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences)

The Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences conducts the documentary work as part of long-term team projects such as bibliographies and dictionaries but nowadays researchers use their traditional forms less frequently. Easy and quick access to historical sources and information is the basis of a historian’s workshop. This belief was the inspiration to the idea of a digital vademecum.

The goal of the project is to collect, compile and make available a variety information concerning selected aspects of the cultural heritage from this multi-ethnic area. The project consists of several sections. Dr. Elżbieta Nowosielska will present the section focusing on the bibliography of periodical publications, Adrianna Sznapik and Michał Raczkowski will cover the historical geography and cartography aspects, drawing on the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Countries to reconstruct data on administrative structures, demographics, and cultural heritage. The data collected throughout the project will be made available in the interactive, multifunctional application, the center of which will be a map. Speakers hope that their digital vademecum will not only be a useful tool for researchers but will become a kind of digital memory space for the shared cultural heritage of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.