Forschungsdateninfrastruktur Historische Quellen (HisQu)
Dr. Jörg Hörnschemeyer, Maximilian Berens M.A.
The Forschungsdateninfrastruktur Historische Quellen (HisQu) research project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the e-Research Programme, is developing new methods for the semantic indexing of historical sources, particularly regesta. The core objective is to establish an innovative digital infrastructure that provides digital support to the historical research process and makes work steps and decisions traceable and reproducible.
The Repertorium Germanicum (RG), published by the German Historical Institute (DHI) in Rome, serves as an exemplary use case. The RG is a basic medieval studies research project with roots in the 19th century, which systematically indexes late medieval Vatican sources on imperial and regional history for German historical research. In HisQu, the datasets, which have already been partially digitised and are accessible via RG Online, are semantically modelled using AI-based methods and integrated into a Wikibase-based data infrastructure.
By digitalising workflows, providing open data interfaces and integrating editorial processes with open-source approaches, the aim is not only for RG data to be accessed more efficiently in the future, but also to be more closely linked to external digital information resources. This will lay the foundations for embedding the RG content in broader digital research contexts beyond its current scope of use.
The DHI Rome subproject is part of HisQu. The aim is to further develop the RG to make it a sustainably expandible digital infrastructure that is fit for the future and for new research questions and methods in the historical sciences. The RG infrastructure will be modernised on the one hand through modules for the semantic structuring and enrichment of the database, and on the other hand through the further development of the RG Online user interfaces by adding data query, analysis and visualisation modules.
This project is carried out in collaboration with the following partner organisations:
Germania Sacra an der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen
Gotha Research Centre at the University of Erfurt
Interdisciplinary working group MEPHIsto at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Contacts at the DHI Rome:
Maximilian Berens, M.A.
Dr. Jörg Hörnschemeyer
Duration: 2025–2028
