Prosopography has long been part of the historian’s set of methods. Social Networks Analysis is more recent but have met with an enduring popularity, undoubtedly backed by the success of the so-called « social media ». When dealing with the field of cultural productions, those methods can be difficult to implement. Albeit quite fashionable because of their appealing graphic outputs, social networks analysis is especially contentious. Quality and consistency of data often undermine the soundness of these approaches. Our goal here is to provide an overview of the methods used by historians of culture to combine prosopography and a network-based approach to cultural history. Building on a variety of examples, this introduction will consider several pitfalls and several assets of those tools.

Aurélien Ruellet is lecturer in Le Mans University where he teaches early modern history. His PhD, completed in 2014, dealt with the technical and scientific patronage in France and England in the 17th century.

When indexing a name in a prosopographical database, several aspects have to be considered: ontological/social identity (person, family or corporate body), gender identity, pseudonym, homonym or fictitious status, life span, occupations and offices, bibliographical references etc. In addition to these characteristics, one has to model different kinds of relationships and networks to which an individual or a group may have been connected: kinship (consanguineal or ritual), hierarchical relations (teacher/student), affective relations (fellows, friends), juridical dependencies, political alliances or ideological affiliations. Our presentation will briefly treat of these aspects and give some examples of choices made in several projects for modelling and visualising the prosopographical data. Besides, we will highlight the importance of collecting visual elements for strengthening the documentary identity of a person, family or corporate body and the contribution some image annotation tools may have for managing images and linking them to textual sources.

Eduard Frunzeanu is engineer for the Equipex Biblissima; his main task is to manage the authority file of the Biblissima portal (that means the records for persons, corporate bodies, works, places, repositories, shelfmarks) in order to enhance the interoperability of the data provided by the project’s partners.

Régis Robineau is engineer for the Equipex Biblissima; his main assignment is to coordinate the development of the Biblissima portal and ensure its maintenance (http://biblissima.fr). He is also in charge of the image interoperability questions of the project and in this respect he is actively involved in the IIIF community (http://iiif.io).