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©2024, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
The SCC Resource Explorer is an online interactive bibliographic database that offers various ways of approaching the history of the Congregation of the Council. This collection includes as historical sources as the scientific literature published since the 16th century. The SCC Resource Explorer aims to provide a reliable, systematically compiled and constantly updated bibliographical database, related to the most important dicasteries of the Roman Curia. In historiography still there is a lack of resources, focused on fundamental aspects of the governance of the Church after the Council of Trent.
Publications in the database have been selected in accordance with two complementary criteria. Firstly, from a theoretical and deductive perspective, the Research Group systematically analyzed a corpus of scientific publications from various fields, but relevant to the history and operation of the Congregation of the Council. Secondly, from the empirical perspective, the database represents results of personal research experience of the various members of the group. Over the years researchers have studied activities of the Congregation of the Council, its history and competences in the context of specific research questions.
The bibliographical database reflects an interdisciplinary approach of the Research Group and offers a complex and multifaceted picture of the Roman dicastery from the foundation to modernity. The collection permits to evaluate the complexity and evolution of the Congregation from the historical, legal-historical, archival, canonistic, theological, artistic and geographical perspectives. The collection and its structural organization also intend to be a methodological contribution to the study of the Roman Curia. With the necessary modifications linked to the specific competences of the individual departments, it can be successfully adapted to other bodies that supported, and still flank, the Pontiff in the governance of the universal Church.
The SCC Resource Explorer works by a complex system of keywords, built on the basis of the most recent scholarship on the history, competences and modus procedendi of the Congregation of the Council. The keywords system connects all the elements included in the database to a coherent and consistent structure. This system, combined with the more classic functions of an online bibliographic database, offers users extensive search possibilities.
Users can search in the database by combining the different search criteria (general search, special search options and keywords). They can copy, print and download the results in different formats, including the BibTeX (.bib) format. This data can be uploaded into personal collections at the bibliographic software. The data can also be displayed in graphs and downloaded by the user as well as a table.
The database is periodically updated and enriched with new publications. The Research Group is extremely pleased to receive recommendations of publications to be included in the database in order to make it richer.
The SCC Resource Explorer is an opensource web application. The programming code has been developed in the frame of the Research Group and is now available on the GitHub.
This project aims to provide interactive searching options among a large bibliographical dataset with an opportunity to export it into any bibliographical software. During the development process, we faced several challenges on both theoretical and technical levels.
First of all, we aimed to organize the large massive of titles. On the one hand, the data should demonstrate the logical structure of the Congregation of the Council and its areas of expertise. On the other hand, this system should not be overwhelming for readers – a navigation should be simple and follow a clear logic. In addition, it should work fast and be easy to update.
For this reason, among languages and frameworks we choose R, because it offers the libraries as for aesthetically pleasant visualisation as for clear development and deployment. The central point of this application is an option to choose criteria and render the search results in .bib format, which allows readers to add these titles into their library software. This operation became possible because of a double conversion of the original .bib file. Firstly, we generated an original file with the data of the Research Group and converted it to the data table. Seccondly, in the application this process works in another way and from the data table generates the .bib file for downloading.
In addition, we also aimed to provide an opportunity to procced a quantitative research and graphic visualisation of the bibliographical tendencies. For this reason, we used ggplot2 and data tables for makings interactive graphs. A user can set up several filters to particulate the data sample and choose a graphic representation among lines, bars, pies and dots.
All the resources were obtained within the personal research projects of the group members that include such subjects as canon law, ecclesiastical law, Church history, historical geography, religious studies and many others.
The SCC Resource Explorer is an interactive bibliographic database, which provides a collection of primary and secondary resources, dedicated to the Congregation of the Council, one of the main administrative bodies of the Church after the Council of Trent. The final database contains more than thousand entities, related to historical and legal aspects of the Congregation of the Council and Roman Curia. The SCC Resource Explorer is an ongoing project and the database enriches with new entities in cooperation with the international academic community of historians, legal and religious scholars. The application provides an access to the database within advanced searching options and graphic visualization. All the results can be downloaded as a .bib file or a graphic picture.
Our database includes articles, books and legal treatises, which focus on the history, competencies, modus procedendi, and actors of the Congregation of the Council. It covers a period from 1673 to nowadays. The dataset includes entities in various languages, including English, Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Latin, etc.
The database is constantly enriched with new entries in a collaborative way (link to the page “Get involved”) with the international scientific community. The web app offers advanced searching options, multiple graphic visualization of the search results and multiformat downloading opportunities.
In accordance with the hierarchical character of the Congregation of the Council’s subjects, our bibliography has a hierarchical structure with multi-level keywords that reflect as theoretical as practical issues of the Congregation activities.
Our application has many options and functions. The documentation provides more information about the development and particular elements, how they work. They can also be replicated in other similar projects.
©2024, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft