To celebrate World Digital Preservation Day 2024, this is the first in a series of occasional blog posts which seek to shine a light on some interesting examples of datasets uploaded to DataShare, the University of Edinburgh’s open access data repository.

Research data that is deposited in DataShare comes from across the Colleges and Schools and can relate to cutting-edge scientific research or exploration of under-studied social worlds, however, we also receive valuable historical research data too!

A prime example of this is an item submitted by Professor Charles West, who is based in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, titled “Autun List of Local Churches, c. 1000”. As neatly described in the title, it contains a list of 144 churches in the diocese of Autun, France, which was made around the year 1000. An example of one of the churches, the Church of Saint Martin in Cordesse, can be seen in the photo below.

According to the item’s description: “The dataset provides the names in the list, the modern place-names, the departement these places are located in, their order in the original list, whether each church is attested in earlier documentation or not, and if so, approximately when.”

The item took on a new life when it was shared on Twitter (now known as X), where a user, William J.B. Mattingly, took the dataset and added latitudinal and longitudinal data to create a mapped visualisation shown in a video. This reuse is documented in the Altmetrics of the item, which details how a DataShare item has been shared or cited. It is also a neat demonstration of how data shared on DataShare can be reused in useful and creative ways!

The DataShare item can be found here: https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/7774

The Tweet with the data visualisation can be found here: https://x.com/wjb_mattingly/status/1813587749905072497

Keith Munro,
Research Data Support Assistant