Swedish Women Online (SWO) from the Middle Ages to the Present A Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women, in Swedish and English
Why are there no female artists, philosophers, scientists, politicians, or authors? This question surfaces every time the history of art, literature, medicine, and philosophy are to be written. One important reason is that writing history is based on the existing biographical dictionaries where the principle of selection is gender biased. Only five to ten percent of the entries in the large Swedish biographical dictionaries are women. Therefore, if writing history is to become less misleading, then the very point of departure - the source material - has to be revised.
The aim of the project is to create an online Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women - hereafter abbreviated as SWO - which would be linked to other internet archives and online works of reference dealing with Swedish women; this on-line dictionary will itself instigate and contribute to further research and scholarly work. The dictionary will be published in both a Swedish and an English version. It will be available on the internet as an ongoing and developable database, which is linked to other archives, museums and geographical positions of significance, provided with tagged keywords, and freely accessible. In this way, information about Swedish women's contributions to science, literature, art, politics, and philosophy will be easily available to both Swedish and international researchers and will be a source of new scholarship.
The aim of the project is to create an online Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women - hereafter abbreviated as SWO - which would be linked to other internet archives and online works of reference dealing with Swedish women; this on-line dictionary will itself instigate and contribute to further research and scholarly work. The dictionary will be published in both a Swedish and an English version. It will be available on the internet as an ongoing and developable database, which is linked to other archives, museums and geographical positions of significance, provided with tagged keywords, and freely accessible. In this way, information about Swedish women's contributions to science, literature, art, politics, and philosophy will be easily available to both Swedish and international researchers and will be a source of new scholarship.
Final report
Scientific final report
The result of the project Swedish Women On-line, Dnr IN 15-0620: 1 + Dnr IN 15-0620: 2, is a free accessible structured database with biographical articles about one thousand Swedish women, from the Middle Ages to the present. The work is called the Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL, www.skbl.se) and has both ISBN and ISSN. SKBL was launched on March 8, 2018 and the event attracted considerable attention in media. From the first week we have visitor statistics announcing that SKBL was visited by about 10,000 users per day. That development seems to have continued. Prior to the final report, the language bank compiled the number of visits per month in 2019:
1 : 250 466
2 : 593 729
3 : 246 193
4 : 506 599
5 : 198 213
6 : 256 160
7 : 252 103
8 : 221 065
9 : 206 223
10 : 274 652
11 : 211 205
12 : 226 770
Totalt: 3 443 378
The articles have been written by 390 specialists, affiliated with various educational institutions or cultural institutions in Sweden. They are presented under the Article Author tab. The enrolled authors have also compiled biographical data and the editors have subsequently checked and supplemented this information. All material is translated into English by Alexia Grosjean, St Andrews. The database has been constructed by the Language Bank's Karp group. The SKBL site, which is a special expense item, has been designed by Håkan Granath, the Humanist Library, in collaboration with Karp and the project group (Dnr IN 15-0620: 2).
Each article is tagged with keywords that classify the biographers' efforts in an established manner. The keywords have been designed according to established classification system for the libraries and facilitate systematic searches of activities, organizational belongings and relevant locations etc. In addition, searches can be made on individual keywords, such as teachers or philanthropy etc. The site is easy to navigate and would be a resource in research and teaching as well as for an interested public. On several occasions, the database has been demonstrated for teachers in primary and secondary school.
For advanced searches, the user has to go directly into Karp. There, different variables can be combined which make it possible to analyse social-historical conditions. Places of birth and death, as well as marital status and the number of children, are examples of aspects that are thus possible to illustrate statistically.
The thousand women in the database do not completely represent all women in the past of Sweden. The editorial selection process is described under the tab About SKBL and the tendency in the material (women who have done things that matter for the development of society) are extensively reported. Under the same tab, the project group's work process is reported in the collection of relevant women, the choice of enrolled authors, the supplementary information and corrections of data the project group has done in the various entries. The women who are in SKBL have been born in Sweden, or had their business located in Sweden. By Sweden is meant the boundaries the kingdom have had at present time. Prior to 1809, Finland is thus included and in this regard, the approach is followed in the Swedish biographical lexicon, which SKBL is intended to supplement.
Even before application date for the reported project, an external analysis was conducted, where the project team was able to ascertain that digital lexicons that collect historically significant women exist in several European countries (including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria). Books have also been published with similar ambitions (UK). However, SKBL is so far unique in its digital interface that makes it possible to combine analogue reading (article) with quantifiable searches (biographical data). This quality and the fact that the material in SKBL has been translated into English makes it reasonable to believe that SKBL will be used in international research in the future.
SKBL is part of KvinnSam's collections, the University Library, Gothenburg, and is also part of the Language Bank's digital resources. Through the Language Bank, SKBL is also part of the EU's digital research infrastructure, Clarin.
The result of the project Swedish Women On-line, Dnr IN 15-0620: 1 + Dnr IN 15-0620: 2, is a free accessible structured database with biographical articles about one thousand Swedish women, from the Middle Ages to the present. The work is called the Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL, www.skbl.se) and has both ISBN and ISSN. SKBL was launched on March 8, 2018 and the event attracted considerable attention in media. From the first week we have visitor statistics announcing that SKBL was visited by about 10,000 users per day. That development seems to have continued. Prior to the final report, the language bank compiled the number of visits per month in 2019:
1 : 250 466
2 : 593 729
3 : 246 193
4 : 506 599
5 : 198 213
6 : 256 160
7 : 252 103
8 : 221 065
9 : 206 223
10 : 274 652
11 : 211 205
12 : 226 770
Totalt: 3 443 378
The articles have been written by 390 specialists, affiliated with various educational institutions or cultural institutions in Sweden. They are presented under the Article Author tab. The enrolled authors have also compiled biographical data and the editors have subsequently checked and supplemented this information. All material is translated into English by Alexia Grosjean, St Andrews. The database has been constructed by the Language Bank's Karp group. The SKBL site, which is a special expense item, has been designed by Håkan Granath, the Humanist Library, in collaboration with Karp and the project group (Dnr IN 15-0620: 2).
Each article is tagged with keywords that classify the biographers' efforts in an established manner. The keywords have been designed according to established classification system for the libraries and facilitate systematic searches of activities, organizational belongings and relevant locations etc. In addition, searches can be made on individual keywords, such as teachers or philanthropy etc. The site is easy to navigate and would be a resource in research and teaching as well as for an interested public. On several occasions, the database has been demonstrated for teachers in primary and secondary school.
For advanced searches, the user has to go directly into Karp. There, different variables can be combined which make it possible to analyse social-historical conditions. Places of birth and death, as well as marital status and the number of children, are examples of aspects that are thus possible to illustrate statistically.
The thousand women in the database do not completely represent all women in the past of Sweden. The editorial selection process is described under the tab About SKBL and the tendency in the material (women who have done things that matter for the development of society) are extensively reported. Under the same tab, the project group's work process is reported in the collection of relevant women, the choice of enrolled authors, the supplementary information and corrections of data the project group has done in the various entries. The women who are in SKBL have been born in Sweden, or had their business located in Sweden. By Sweden is meant the boundaries the kingdom have had at present time. Prior to 1809, Finland is thus included and in this regard, the approach is followed in the Swedish biographical lexicon, which SKBL is intended to supplement.
Even before application date for the reported project, an external analysis was conducted, where the project team was able to ascertain that digital lexicons that collect historically significant women exist in several European countries (including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria). Books have also been published with similar ambitions (UK). However, SKBL is so far unique in its digital interface that makes it possible to combine analogue reading (article) with quantifiable searches (biographical data). This quality and the fact that the material in SKBL has been translated into English makes it reasonable to believe that SKBL will be used in international research in the future.
SKBL is part of KvinnSam's collections, the University Library, Gothenburg, and is also part of the Language Bank's digital resources. Through the Language Bank, SKBL is also part of the EU's digital research infrastructure, Clarin.