Join the Vienna Hackathon | 10–12 December 2025

Got a dataset with hidden stories to tell? Bring it to Vienna! We’re inviting researchers and collaborators to contribute datasets for our upcoming Vienna Hackathon, a three-day hands-on event focused on data, collaboration, and innovation.

Datasets could include library or auction catalogues, correspondences and accounting books, publishers’ archives, legal sources that document book possession (testaments…), pictorial content in books … and can be simple CSV or Excel files, but also TEI files.

If your data fits into one of our topical clusters (that are likely to represent small hackathon groups), we want to hear from you:

• Data extraction and “datafication” of sources
• Aggregation of multiple datasets
• Ontologies or linked open data and their implementation of standardized entities through which (multilingual, pictorial) datasets could be interlinked (names, dates, motives …)
• Representativeness of data, bias and possible remedies
• Processable information on book materiality to be deduced from bibliographical metadata
• Comparison between languages and translations (language states and registers)
• Application of GIS for spatial and geographical reach of ordonnances, news hubs and review journals

If your dataset does not fit into the outlined scheme, please do get in touch so that we can discuss the matter.

No programming skills? NO PROBLEM. This hackathon is about curiosity and collaboration, not coding credentials. But if you do know your way around tools like OpenRefine, oXygen, Python, or R — let us know!

Submit a one-page proposal by 31 July 2025, outlining:

• What your dataset contains (and its format/license if available)
• How it connects to the broader COST Action and your working group
• Which of the above clusters it touches on

Send your proposal to Joëlle Weis, Kerstin Manninger, and Thomas Wallnig. Decisions will be shared by early/mid September, and we’ll follow up with event details in October (including a possible hybrid intro and wrap-up session).

We’re aiming for about 15 participants from the COST Action, supported by trainers and student assistants from Vienna — travel and participation costs covered.

Let your data meet its moment — join us in Vienna this December!