Footprints - Jewish Books through Time and Place
Footprints traces the history and movement of Jewish books since the inception of print.
The history of the book is an important part of humanities scholarship. Especially as more books are digitized, scholars, librarians, collectors, and others have become increasingly attuned to the significance of individual books as objects with their own unique story. Jewish books in particular tell a fascinating story about the spread of knowledge and faith in a global Diaspora.
Every literary work represents a moment in time and space where an idea was conceived and documented. But the history of a book continues long after composition as it is bought, sold, shared, read, confiscated, stored, or even discarded. This history is the essence of Footprints.
This dataset contains persons (foaf.name, skos.prefLabel, jl.birthDate, jl.deathDate, owl.sameAs [GND,VIAF,LOC], jl.occupation), books (gndo.author,jl.hasAbstract, gndo.language, gndo.associatedPlace, gndo.dateOfPublication, dc.publisher, gndo.author, gndo.editor, gndo.printer, dc.contributor, gndo.compiler, gndo.translator, gndo.sponsorOrPatron, gndo.dedicatee, jl.hasAbstract, jl.describedAt, gndo.owner, gndo.formerOwner) and places ( gndo.gndIdentifier, jl.describedAt, rdfs.label, skos.prefLabel, geo.asWKT, gndo.hierarchicalSuperiorOfPlaceOrGeographicName)
| Kind: | Records |
|---|---|
| Method: |
Converted, Rule-based, Machine translation
Automated: statements made by a method that can be wrong individually and were not checked one by one. |
| Source: | https://footprints.ctl.columbia.edu/ |
| Example: | http://data.judaicalink.org/data/footprints/0039ddb3-52b5-5644-bd42-a7ab92611d03 |
| URI namespaces: | http://data.judaicalink.org/data/footprints/ |
| Maintained by: | Kai Eckert |
| License: |
CC BY-SA 4.0
Please credit: Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place, ed. Michelle Chesner et al. Licence as stated by the source |
| FID portal: | This dataset in the catalogue of the FID Jewish Studies |
| Generator: | generators/footprints (how every version was made) |
| All locations: | Where the files of this dataset are (data finder) |
Versions
2026-10-12 stable · Kai Eckert
Made from 2024-03-18 with its systematic errors fixed: identifier links and the relations of the books as IRIs, dictionary dates, the nameless resource, run times and empty values dropped, WKT repaired.
| File | Size | Triples | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|
| footprints.ttl.gz | 1.3 MB | 91,781 | 31fc38e2552f… |
| footprints-meta.ttl.gz | 2.4 kB | 64 | 381b7fd633ef… |
2025-03-21 older · Benjamin Schnabel
Regenerated with a rewritten generator that keeps only the person loop (the book and place sections and the GND, VIAF and translation lookups were dropped, apparently because the old generator no longer ran); contains only the types and names of the resources. 2024-03-18 stays the stable version.
| File | Size | Triples | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|
| footprints.ttl.gz | 445.3 kB | 01973c29750d… |
|
| footprints-meta.ttl.gz | 2.4 kB | 60 | 0287d0362353… |
2024-03-18 older · Christian Deuschle
The richer version: books with titles, owners, former owners, places, dates of publication, authors and languages; from the backup of the dumps of 2025-02-06.
| File | Size | Triples | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|
| footprints.ttl.gz | 1.3 MB | a5d06cb5f3c5… |
|
| footprints-meta.ttl.gz | 2.3 kB | 60 | 57200b629d51… |
Changelog
- 2026-10-12, Kai Eckert: Version 2026-10-12 made the stable version (it keeps all data of 2024-03-18, with its errors fixed).
- 2026-10-12 (version 2026-10-12), Kai Eckert: New version made from 2024-03-18 (decision 0024): owl:sameAs as IRIs (2,298; 673 ‘None’ dropped), the relations of the books as IRIs (6,029; gndo:ditor as gndo:editor), dates written as Python dictionaries dropped as duplicates (220) or stated as EDTF (2), the resource of the empty name and its 74 links dropped, the run times (dcterms:created, 11,571) and empty or ‘None’ values (967) dropped, WKT points repaired (99). Made by generators/footprints/generate.py.
- 2024-03-12, Christian Deuschle: First version, with generator.
