Shakespeare and Company Project Data Sets

Abstract

This article describes three data sets from the Shakespeare and Company Project. The data sets provide information about Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach’s bookshop and lending library in interwar Paris. The first data set focuses on the members of the lending library. The second, on the books that circulated in the lending library. The third, on the events—borrows, purchases, subscriptions, renewals, deposits, reimbursements—that connected members and books. Together, the three data sets promise to address and bridge concerns in modernist studies, the digital humanities, and the public humanities. Work on the data sets began in 2014. The first two versions of the data sets were released in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The current version, 1.2, was released in 2022. Over forty people have contributed to the data sets.

Lending Books on the Left and Right Banks: Borrowing Practices at the American Library in Paris and Shakespeare and Company

“…Based on the Year Book data, 1925 and 1926 represent dramatic highs in the number of those borrowing books from the ALP, although it is unclear how consistent the library's methods of tallying users were across years. The Year Book report 3697 cardholders in 1921, 3500 in 1922, 2270, 2781, 4678 in 1925, 4387 in 1926, somewhere between 1825and 3110 borrowers in 1927, up to 3404 members in 1928, and 3402 for 1929(see ALP Year Book 1922, 1925, 1927, 1930; Kotin and Koeser, "Data Sets" 4.…”