The first annual CEDAR mini symposium during last March 1st was a successful event! It gathered together 22 attendees from 9 interdisciplinary institutions in the Netherlands, all of them directly or indirectly linked with our census research.
During the symposium, the CEDAR members presented their work and results from the past year. The first part started with the practical challenges of census data harmonization, highlighting the difficulties of both historians and other digital humanities researchers when dealing with such a heterogeneous data set. This was followed by a more technical description, looking at the principles and methods on how to apply semantic technologies to the Dutch historical censuses. Later, other experts in the field gave presentations related to the census from very different perspectives: from in-and-out interactions with our brother project, Data2Semantics, to research prospects on harmonization, durable archiving infrastructures, and insights on historical classification systems. These lead to very interesting and productive discussions throughout the day, which resulted in great feedback for us for the next coming months.
We want to thank all participants for your assistance and great contributions. We hope to see you all again in the next symposium!