The Shakespeare and Company Project makes three datasets available to download in CSV and JSON formats. The datasets provide information about lending library members; books that circulated in the lending library; and lending library events, including borrows, purchases, memberships, and renewals. The datasets may be used individually or in combination—the site URLs are consistent identifiers across all three.
To learn more about the datasets, read "The Shakespeare and Company Project Data Sets," published by the Journal of Cultural Analytics. Contact us with additional questions.
The Project regularly updates the datasets. When citing, include the dataset version. Version 1.0 was released in July 2020. Version 1.1 was released in January 2021. Version 1.2 was released in January 2022. A summary of changes may be found on the Project's DataSpace page.
The Project is committed to supporting new research. Please contact us to share your ideas and work. The datasets are released under the Creative Commons attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY-4.0).
Members ¶
The members dataset (follow link for downloads in CSV and JSON formats) includes information about 5,235 lending library members in the following fields: member URL, member name, sort name, title, gender, individual or organization, has lending library card, birth year, death year, membership years, VIAF URL, Wikipedia URL, nationalities, addresses, postal codes, arrondissements, longitude and latitude coordinates, notes, last updated.
Cite this dataset:
Kotin, Joshua, Rebecca Sutton Koeser, Carl Adair, Priyanka Aiyer, Serena Alagappan, Paige Allen, Jean Bauer, Oliver J. Browne, Nick Budak, Harriet Calver, Robert Chiossi, Jin Yun Chow, Iliyah Coles, Ian Davis, Gissoo Doroudian, Currie Engel, Violet Gautreau, Alex Gjaja, Elspeth A. Green, Isaac Hart, Benjamin Hicks, Samuel Himmelfarb, Madeleine E. Joelson, Fedor Karmanov, Carolyn Kelly, Sara Krolewski, Xinyi Li, Ellie Maag, Elizabeth Macksey, Cate Mahoney, Francesca Mancino, Jesse D. McCarthy, Mary Naydan, Yvonne Patch, Sally Root, Isabel Ruehl, Sylvie Thode, Katherine Vandermel, Camey VanSant, and Clifford E. Wulfman. Shakespeare and Company Project Dataset: Lending Library Members. Version 1.2. January 2022. Distributed by DataSpace, Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.34770/8c2s-a169
Books ¶
The books dataset (follow link for downloads in CSV and JSON formats) includes information about 6,020 books and other items in the following fields: book URL, title, author, editor, contributor, translator, illustrator, introduction, preface, photographer, year of publication, format, uncertain, eBook URL, volume/issue, notes, event count, borrow count, purchase count, circulation years, last updated.
Cite this dataset:
Kotin, Joshua, Rebecca Sutton Koeser, Carl Adair, Priyanka Aiyer, Serena Alagappan, Paige Allen, Jean Bauer, Oliver J. Browne, Nick Budak, Harriet Calver, Robert Chiossi, Jin Yun Chow, Iliyah Coles, Ian Davis, Gissoo Doroudian, Currie Engel, Violet Gautreau, Alex Gjaja, Elspeth A. Green, Isaac Hart, Benjamin Hicks, Samuel Himmelfarb, Madeleine E. Joelson, Fedor Karmanov, Carolyn Kelly, Sara Krolewski, Xinyi Li, Ellie Maag, Elizabeth Macksey, Cate Mahoney, Francesca Mancino, Jesse D. McCarthy, Mary Naydan, Yvonne Patch, Sally Root, Isabel Ruehl, Sylvie Thode, Katherine Vandermel, Camey VanSant, and Clifford E. Wulfman. Shakespeare and Company Project Dataset: Lending Library Books. Version 1.2. January 2022. Distributed by DataSpace, Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.34770/yj5r-0m59
Events ¶
The events dataset (follow link for downloads in CSV and JSON formats) includes information about 35,523 lending library events in the following fields: event type, start date, end date, member URL, member name, sort name, subscription price, deposit amount, duration, duration in days, volume limit, category, purchase date, reimbursement amount, book borrow status, borrow duration in days, book purchase price, currency, item URL, title, volume, author, year of publication, notes, source type, source citation, source manifest, source image.
Dates are in ISO 8601 format. Following information from the Project's sources, some dates only include month and year, year, or month and day.
Cite this dataset:
Kotin, Joshua, Rebecca Sutton Koeser, Carl Adair, Priyanka Aiyer, Serena Alagappan, Paige Allen, Jean Bauer, Oliver J. Browne, Nick Budak, Harriet Calver, Robert Chiossi, Jin Yun Chow, Iliyah Coles, Ian Davis, Gissoo Doroudian, Currie Engel, Violet Gautreau, Alex Gjaja, Elspeth A. Green, Isaac Hart, Benjamin Hicks, Samuel Himmelfarb, Madeleine E. Joelson, Fedor Karmanov, Carolyn Kelly, Sara Krolewski, Xinyi Li, Ellie Maag, Elizabeth Macksey, Cate Mahoney, Francesca Mancino, Jesse D. McCarthy, Mary Naydan, Yvonne Patch, Sally Root, Isabel Ruehl, Sylvie Thode, Katherine Vandermel, Camey VanSant, and Clifford E. Wulfman. Shakespeare and Company Project Dataset: Lending Library Events. Version 1.2. January 2022. Distributed by DataSpace, Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.34770/nz90-ym25
Cite all three datasets:
Kotin, Joshua, Rebecca Sutton Koeser, Carl Adair, Priyanka Aiyer, Serena Alagappan, Paige Allen, Jean Bauer, Oliver J. Browne, Nick Budak, Harriet Calver, Robert Chiossi, Jin Yun Chow, Iliyah Coles, Ian Davis, Gissoo Doroudian, Currie Engel, Violet Gautreau, Alex Gjaja, Elspeth A. Green, Isaac Hart, Benjamin Hicks, Samuel Himmelfarb, Madeleine E. Joelson, Fedor Karmanov, Carolyn Kelly, Sara Krolewski, Xinyi Li, Ellie Maag, Elizabeth Macksey, Cate Mahoney, Francesca Mancino, Jesse D. McCarthy, Mary Naydan, Yvonne Patch, Sally Root, Isabel Ruehl, Sylvie Thode, Katherine Vandermel, Camey VanSant, and Clifford E. Wulfman. Shakespeare and Company Project Dataset: Lending Library Members, Books, Events. Version 1.2. January 2022. Distributed by DataSpace, Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.34770/dtqa-2981
Cite this document
“Data Export.” Shakespeare and Company Project, version 1.7.1. Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University. April 13, 2020. http://shakespeareandco.princeton.edu/about/data/. Accessed November 21, 2024.