Historical science compounds millennia of records of human activity, which have become available in digital, searchable form. Focusing on the largest such dataset—Wikidata—we attempt to find quantitative answers to the questions: Whose periods and which places' people do we know most about? What interests us about them? Who are we forgetting? What trends underlie the number of people registered and written about over time? We examine the individuals who have ended up in these datasets in relation to their readership, thereby shedding light not only on history itself but also on the practice of writing it.
ETH Zurich, Switzerland - ORCID: 0009-0003-6908-314X
University of Göttingen, Germany
University of Göttingen, Germany
Chapter Title
Whose History We Keep: Benchmarking our Records of the Past’s Protagonists
Authors
Lennart Finke, Sarah Sophie Pohl, Luca Lukačević, Janek Große, Stefan Haas
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-1010-2.30
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2026
Copyright Information
© 2026 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Wikidata e la ricerca. Condividere esperienze / Wikidata and Research. Sharing Experiences
Book Subtitle
Atti del Convegno, Firenze, 5-6 giugno 2025 / Conference proceedings, Florence, 5-6 June 2025
Editors
Elena Marangoni, Camillo Carlo Pellizzari di San Girolamo
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
378
Publication Year
2026
Copyright Information
© 2026 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-1010-2
ISBN Print
979-12-215-1009-6
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-1010-2
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919