Digital Bibliography in the Age of Linked Data

Abstract

The article explores how the interplay of ideological values and technological capacities have shaped the digital bibliography of British print history. Using a misgendering in the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) as a case study, the article explores how information flows through resources like Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), and Early English Books Online (EEBO), library catalogues, WorldCat, and retail outlets like Amazon. The article argues that as data from the ESTC is reproduced through linked data structures, information is ‘authorized’ far beyond what a single resource would do alone or what its original authors imagined or designed. While feminist, queer, and critical race scholarship has discursively created and revised new histories of textual production, in contrast foundational resources like the ESTC perpetuate old assumptions with unfixed errors and editorial practices that render the who and the why of their metadata choices opaque. The article concludes that radical revision is necessary if we are to disrupt centuries of a white and male norm in British print history.