chcaa/memo_enriched

MeMo Enriched Corpus

The MeMo Enriched Corpus contains 1,174 Danish and Norwegian novels published between 1822 and 1899, by 455 authors. It combines full-text novels and bibliographic metadata with author information and indicators of literary-historical recognition and visibility.

The corpus builds on two datasets: MeMo v1 (MEMO corpus), covering novels from 1870–1899, and MeMo v2 (TekstnetTextCorpus), extending coverage to earlier years (1822–1896). Both have been enriched with author data from Wikidata, Wikipedia, lex.dk and Dansk Forfatterleksikon (DFL, compiled by Niels Jensen; see section 7), as well as matches against canon lists and literary histories.

The original corpus was created by Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Philip Diderichsen and Dorte Haltrup Hansen (June 2023): https://huggingface.co/datasets/MiMe-MeMo/Corpus-v1.1. This version provides an accessible, enriched and annotated release.

from datasets import load_dataset

books = load_dataset("chcaa/memo_enriched", split="train").to_pandas()
authors = load_dataset("chcaa/memo_enriched", "authors", split="train").to_pandas()

Overview

Table	Rows	Contents
books (default)	1,174	One row per book, including full text, book metadata and repeated author information
authors	455	One row per author, including all author-level variables and additional metadata

author_id links the tables. It uses the author's Wikidata QID where available (co-authors are separated by ;), otherwise the DFL ID (dfl:…) or the author's key in the project's metadata.

Corpus composition. 839 books come from MeMo v1 (1870–1899) and 335 from v2 (1822–1896, mostly before 1870). The two versions have different metadata, so some columns are only available for one version. These are marked v1 or v2 below and are empty for the other.

Reading the indicators.

• False and 0 mean "not found", not necessarily "checked and absent". Authors without a lex.dk page have empty lex.dk fields. Authors without a Wikidata QID or a Wikipedia page have zero Wikidata/Wikipedia counts.
• The indicators capture different aspects of recognition and visibility. Canon lists and literary histories reflect institutional or scholarly recognition; Wikipedia, Wikidata and lex.dk capture biographical and bibliographical visibility. They are complementary indicators, not interchangeable measures of canonicity.
• Name registries and DFL bibliographies provide names rather than persistent identifiers. Authors were matched by full name, modernized name, pseudonym, or initials and surname where unambiguous. Initial-based matches are the least certain. Wikidata QIDs were assigned manually.
• Title matches (title_mention_…) ignore case and punctuation. A volume or subtitle can count as a match: Lykke Per Idet Fremmede, for example, matches Lykke-Per.

The books table

1. Book metadata

Column	Corpus	Description
filename	all	File name, beginning with publication year and author
author_id	all	Author identifier; see Overview
title	all	Title. æ/ø/å are written ae/oe/aa in v1 but retained in v2
title_original	v1	Title with original spelling and æ/ø/å
subtitle, volume	all	As recorded in the corpus metadata
year	all	Publication year
publ_date	v1	Publication year in the original v1 metadata; differs from year for two books
text	all	Full text
simple_word_count	all	Number of words in text (whitespace-separated)

2. Bibliographic and corpus metadata

Column	Corpus	Description
pages, illustrations, typeface, publisher, price	all	Bibliographic information. pages counts the printed book's pages (not the novel); typeface is antikva or gothic (fraktur); price comes from Dansk Bogfortegnelse
notes	all	Cataloguers' notes. In v1, e.g. series information or missing pages; in v2, bibliographic notes such as serial publication, price and original publication year
source	v1	Source of the file, typically KB
novel_start, novel_end	v1	PDF pages where the novel begins and ends, excluding prefaces and other material
serialno	v1	Row number in the original MeMo metadata
historical, period, period_notes	v1	Historical-novel annotations from MeMo v1. historical is 1 for the 65 books tagged as historical novels and empty otherwise; empty does not mean non-historical. period estimates the setting, and period_notes provides further details
scan_source, text_source, kb-levering, barcode_(kb), online	v2	Bibliographic and digitization information from TekstnetTextCorpus

3. Author metadata as given in the corpus

These fields preserve the original, unstandardized author metadata. Standardized author information is provided in section 4.

Column	Corpus	Description
name_key	all	Author's key in the project's metadata (first and last name, pseudonym, or file name)
auth_first, auth_last, pseudonym	all	Name and pseudonym as recorded in the corpus metadata
nationality	all	dk, no or de
published_under_gender	v1	Gender under which the book was published: male, female or neutral (mostly pseudonyms and initials). See author_gender for the author's gender

4. Standardized author metadata

Sections 4–8 describe the author, so a value is the same for all books by that author, and these columns are also included in the authors table. Columns marked book describe the book itself.

Names, gender and pseudonyms come from the project's manually curated author metadata. Birth and death dates come from Wikidata where available.

Column	Level	Description
author_name	author	Standardized name, with modernized surname where available
author_gender	author	m / f. From the author metadata, then Wikidata, then the v1 corpus gender label. Empty for 51 authors (mostly anonymous or initials only)
author_nationality	author	dk, no or de
author_pseudonyms	author	All known pseudonyms
author_birth, author_death	author	Birth and death years, from Wikidata where available, otherwise author metadata
author_occupations, author_birthplace, author_deathplace	author	Occupations and places of birth and death, from Wikidata
author_debut_year	author	Earlier of the author's DFL debut and first book in this corpus; an approximate debut year, not necessarily the first publication
years_since_debut	book	year − author_debut_year

5. lex.dk (Den Store Danske)

Author pages on lex.dk were identified through Wikidata (using the Lex ID) and supplemented with manual links.

Column	Level	Description
search_link_lex_auth	author	Link to the author's lex.dk page
wordcount_main_text_lex_auth	author	Word count of the article
lex_author_mentioned_in_other_authorpage	author	Number of other corpus authors' lex.dk pages linking to this author's page (once per linking author)
title_mention_lex_authorpage	book	Whether the book's title appears among the works mentioned on the author's page

6. Wikidata and Wikipedia

Column	Level	Description
n_wikipedia_languages_auth	author	Number of Wikipedia language editions with an article on the author
n_wikipedia_sitelinks_auth	author	Total Wikimedia sitelinks, including Wikisource, Wikiquote and Commons
n_library_authorities_auth	author	Number of authority records across VIAF, ISNI, Library of Congress, GND, BnF, LIBRIS and BIBSYS (0–7)
n_wikidata_awards_auth, n_wikidata_notable_works_auth	author	Number of awards (P166) and notable works (P800) listed on Wikidata
n_wikidata_works_auth	author	Number of Wikidata items listing the author as author (P50)
wordcount_wikipedia_da_auth, wordcount_wikipedia_en_auth	author	Word count of the Danish and English Wikipedia articles
wikipedia_da_author_mentioned_in_other_authorpage, wikipedia_en_author_mentioned_in_other_authorpage	author	Number of other corpus authors' Wikipedia pages linking to this author's page, in Danish and English respectively
title_mention_wikidata_notable_works	book	Whether the book is listed among the author's notable works on Wikidata

7. Dansk Forfatterleksikon (DFL)

Dansk Forfatterleksikon is an online register of fiction published in Danish or translated into Danish up to and including 1975, as well as drama and its authors. It was compiled by librarian Niels Jensen as part of litteraturpriser.dk.

The DFL data provide the author's titles (original Danish and Norwegian works), counted once per title at first edition. We count only titles published from the author's age of 12 until two years after death, to exclude posthumous reprints and namesakes. These data are used to estimate debut year, last publication year and number of works.

DFL coverage is limited before approximately 1840. Consequently, author_debut_year takes the earlier of the DFL debut and the author's first book in this corpus. DFL author pages are linked through Wikidata IDs, the project's author metadata or Niels Jensen's person index.

Column	Level	Description
author_last_work_year	author	Year of the author's last new title in DFL
author_dfl_n_works	author	Number of titles in DFL
author_dfl_id, author_dfl_bio_url, author_dfl_bib_url	author	DFL ID, biography page and bibliography page

author_last_work_year and author_dfl_n_works are empty where the DFL entry is likely to refer to a namesake.

8. Canon lists and literary histories

The following indicators record whether authors or books appear in selected canon lists, literary histories and reference works.

Column	Level	Description
auth_mention_<book>_nameregistry	author	Whether the author appears in the name registry of each source (one column per source): Rød dansk litteraturhistorie (rød_dan_lithis, volumes 2–3 merged), Grøn dansk litteraturhistorie (grøn_dan_lithis, volumes 5–7 merged), lithåndb, littveje, litt_find, littmøn, littgenveje, bruglitt, medtiden, litt_intro, trane and håndb
auth_mention_rød_dan_lithis_titleregistry	author	Whether the author appears in the title registry of Rød dansk litteraturhistorie
title_mention_rød_dan_lithis_titleregistry	book	Whether the book appears in the title registry of Rød dansk litteraturhistorie
canon_culture_authors	author	Whether the author is included in the Kulturkanon
title_mention_canon_culture_authors	book	Whether the book is listed under the author in the Kulturkanon
canon_educational_2025, canon_educational_2004	author	Whether the author appears in the 2025 or 2004 school canon
author_mention_dsl_classic	author	Whether the author has a DSL classic
title_mention_canon_culture_authors_dsl_classic	book	Whether the book is a DSL classic

The authors table

The authors table contains one row per author and all author-level columns described in sections 4–8. It also includes:

Column	Description
author_id	Author identifier; see Overview
qid	Wikidata QID(s), empty where unavailable
wikidata_label	Author's label on Wikidata
author_full_firstnames	Full first names, where known
n_books, first_book_year, last_book_year	Number and publication-year range of books in this corpus
n_name_registries	Number of name registries (section 8) listing the author
wikidata_awards, wikidata_notable_works, wikipedia_languages	Awards, notable works and Wikipedia language editions behind the counts in section 6, stored as semicolon-separated text
mentioned_works_lex_auth, mentioned_links_lex_auth	Italicized text (approximately works mentioned) and links to other lex.dk pages in the author's article
author_birth_source, author_death_source	Source of birth and death dates: wikidata or memo_metadata (the project's author metadata)
lex_link_source	Source of the lex.dk link: wikidata or manual
biografisk_leksikon_link, kvindebiografisk_leksikon_link, litteraturpriser_dk_link, viaf_link	Links to other reference works, from Wikidata

Citation

Please cite the original corpus creators when using this dataset:

@inproceedings{bjerring-hansen_mending_2022,
    address = {Uppsala, Sweden},
    title = {Mending {Fractured} {Texts}. {A} heuristic procedure for correcting {OCR} data: 6th {Digital} {Humanities} in the {Nordic} and {Baltic} {Countries} {Conference}, {DHNB} 2022},
    volume = {3232},
    shorttitle = {Mending {Fractured} {Texts}. {A} heuristic procedure for correcting {OCR} data},
    url = {https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3232/paper14.pdf},
    urldate = {2024-08-19},
    booktitle = {{CEUR} {Workshop} {Proceedings}},
    author = {Bjerring-Hansen, Jens and Kristensen-McLachlan, Ross Deans and Diderichsen, Philip and Hansen, Dorte Haltrup},
    year = {2022},
    pages = {177--186},
}

Enriched dataset created by: Pascale Feldkamp & Kit Morgenstjerne