Data

For this year's data sprint, we have selected three cultural history data sets:

• The Writings of the Freedom of the Press
• Literature from the DOD collection
• The Census from 1787

The Writings of the Freedom of the Press dates back to the time when the Enlightenment thinker Johan Struensee briefly had the opportunity to influence the political development in the authoritarian state with new interesting reforms such as freedom of the press. Freedom of the press meant that from the years 1770 to 1772, writings with a diverse content were published outside the state censorship. Some were sarcastic and ironic, while others were general opinion. In 2020-21, the Royal Danish Library digitised the writings in connection with a research project that marked the 250th anniversary of freedom of the press. Read more about the data set.

The DOD collection has arisen the Royal Danish Library's book scanning service. The service has been around for about 10 years and has grown to include around 19,000 digital editions of old books. For the data sprint, almost 3,000 books on various subjects from the second half of the 18th century have been found. Read more about the data set.

The Census from 1787 originates from the Danish National Archives and contains information on such things as name, age, address, marital status and occupation of around 840,000 people. Researchers from the National Archives and the University of Copenhagen have enriched and standardised the census data and thus created new opportunities for data analysis. Read more about the data set.