Geographic visualisation of a dataset collected as part of the SNSF SPARK project 'Dynamic Data Ingestion': geographical origins of medieval scholars stored in the university history databases Projet Studium Parisiense, ASFE Bologna, Repertorium Academicum Germanicum, and Ottocentenario Universita di Padova.

nodegoat has been extended with new features that allow you to ingest data from external resources. You can use this to enrich your dataset with contextual data from sources like Wikidata, or load in publications via a library API or SPARQL endpoint. This extension of nodegoat has been developed as part of the SNFS SPARK project 'Dynamic Data Ingestion (DDI): Server-side data harmonization in historical research. A centralized approach to networking and providing interoperable research data to answer specific scientific questions'. This project has been initiated and led by Kaspar Gubler of the University of Bern.

Because this feature is developed in nodegoat, it can be used by any nodegoat user. And because the Ingestion processes can be fully customised, they can be used to query any endpoint that publishes JSON data. This new feature allows you to use nodegoat as a graphical user interface to query, explore, and store Linked Open Data (LOD) from your own environment.

These newly developed functionalities built upon the Linked Data Resource feature that was added to nodegoat in 2015. This initial development was commissioned by the TIC-project at the Ghent University and Maastricht University. This feature was further extended in 2019 during a project of the ADVN.

Workshop Series

We will organise a series of four virtual workshops to share the results of the project and explore nodegoat's data ingestion capabilities. These workshops will take place on 28-04-2021, 05-05-2021, 12-05-2021, and 26-05-2021. All sessions take place between 14:00 and 17:00 CEST. The workshops will take place using Zoom and are recorded so you can watch a session to catch up.

The first two sessions will provide you with a general introduction to nodegoat: in the first session you will learn how to configure your nodegoat environment, while the second session will be devoted to importing a dataset. In the third session you will learn how to run ingestion processes in order to enrich any dataset by using external data sources. The fourth session will be used to query other data sources to ingest additional data.[....]

In the next weeks nodegoat will be present at several conferences. Meet us in Mainz, Paris, Erfurt, or Pisa to learn more about nodegoat or discuss your nodegoat project with us.

Mainz: Networks Across Time and Space

During the 13th Workshop on Historical Network Research titled "Networks Across Time and Space" we will give a nodegoat workshop and present the recently developed analytical features of nodegoat. This event takes place on May 27th and 28th at the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz.

Paris: Teaching History in the Digital Age – international perspectives #dhiha8

We will give a workshop with the title "Teaching Database Skills for Historical Research with nodegoat" on June 17th at the Institut historique allemand Paris. This workshop is part of the conference "Teaching History in the Digital Age – international perspectives #dhiha8".[....]

In the past years, we have given various nodegoat workshops to groups of scholars and students. Even though the entry level of the participants varied from workshop to workshop there were similar challenges that emerged every time. These challenges can be grouped into the following three questions:

1. What is a relational database?
2. My material is very vague/ambiguous/uncertain/contradictory/unique/special, how can I use this in a database?
3. How do I use the nodegoat interface?

nodegoat Workshop at the University of Luxembourg.

Since most of the workshops we give are nodegoat-specific, we aim to teach participants how to do data modelling from within the nodegoat interface. Because of this, and as a result of the usual time constraints (often half a day), we have to leave the first two fundamental questions largely untouched. To remedy this, we have written two blog posts in which we aim to cover the first two questions. The third question is being addressed in the nodegoat video tutorials, the FAQ & forum, and in the near future the documentation.[....]

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Room 100, including card catalogs

At a certain moment in your research process, you might decide that you need to order your material in a structured format. A reason could be that there are too many different people in your body of research and it's becoming hard to keep track of them, let alone their different attributes. Another reason could be that you have repetitive sources, like letters or books, that you want to store and include in your analysis.

In the old days, you would get yourself a card catalogue and start reworking your notes onto these little handy cards.[....]

Next week there will be a nodegoat workshop at the 'DARIAH-EU Annual Meeting' in Gent. This event will take place on 10-13 October. The nodegoat workshop will be on Tuesday 11 October from 14:00 to 15:30. You can find the full program here.

There will also be a nodegoat workshop at the conference 'Creating Spatial Historical Knowledge. New Approaches, Opportunities and Epistemological Implications of Mapping History Digitally'. This conference is organised by the German Historical Institute in Washington DC. The conference takes place on 20-22 October. The nodegoat workshop will be on Thursday 20 October from 14.15 to 16.00. This workshop requires individual registration. The full program of the conference can be found here.

We have proposed a session at the THATCamp Amsterdam on Linked Data challenges. Together with Ingeborg van Vugt we plan to discuss the benefits and difficulties of Linked Data in the humanities.

After a stimulating Virtual Heritage Network conference last year in Maynooth, we look forward to this year's conference in Cork. The conference will take place on 8-10 December.[....]

There will be a nodegoat community meeting at the Mundaneum (Paul Otlet ftw) in Mons (Belgium) on July 1. This meeting is an initiative of the TIC project at the University of Ghent in cooperation with DARIAH-BE. The meeting follows on the doctoral workshop 'Tracing Mobilities & Socio-political Activism. 19th-20th centuries' that takes place at the Mundaneum between June 29 and July 1.

The nodegoat community meeting will start with a general introduction on the current status of nodegoat and upcoming new features. Next, we will have four presentations of projects that make use of nodegoat:

• Wechanged: Agents of change: women editors and socio-cultural transformation in Europe, 1710-1920
• SPIN: Study platform on interlocking nationalisms
• NISE: National movements & intermediary: structures in Europe
• TIC Collaborative: The transnational dynamics of social reform, 1840-1940

See the full program here (the nodegoat meeting is on the last page of the PDF).

Düsseldorf, Assumulator / CC BY-SA 3.0

The tenth Historical Network Research workshop will be in Düsseldorf from 28-04-2016 to 30-04-2016. They have set up an exciting programme on the theme 'Fakten verknüpfen, Erkenntnisse gewinnnen? Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Historischer Netzwerkanalyse'.

On the first day, we will host a nodegoat workshop. This workshop will last half a day and is titled 'Advanced HNR' (it will run in parallel with an introductory historical network research workshop by Martin Stark). Since we only have half a day, we encourage participants who have not used nodegoat before to watch our three tutorials that cover basic functionalities of nodegoat.[....]

This week we gave a two-day workshop on data modeling and database development for historians. This workshop was part of the course Databases for young historians. This course was sponsored by the Huizinga Instituut, Posthumus Instituut, Huygens-ING  and the Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI, UvA) and was hosted by Huygens-ING.

We had a great time working with a group of historians who were eager to learn how to conceptualise data models and how to set up databases. We discussed a couple of common issues that come up when historians start to think in terms of 'data':

• How to determine the scope of your research?
• How to deal with unknown/uncertain primary source material?
• How to use/import 'structured' data?
• How to reference entries in a dataset and how to deal with conflicting sources?
• How to deal with unique/specific objects in a table/type?

These points were taken by the horns (pun intended) when every participant went on to conceptualise their data model. To get a feel for classical database software (tables, primary keys, foreign keys, forms,  etc..), they set up a database in LibreOffice Base. Finally, each participant created their own data model in nodegoat and presented their model and first bits of data.[....]