Abstract

ISEBEL provides intelligent search and analysis across three of the world’s largest machine actionable folklore collections (Dutch Folktale Database-Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam, the Danish Folktale Database-UCLA, and the Mecklenburger Folklore Database-WossiDiA, Rostock) presenting the opportunity for large scale data-driven research into traditional folk expressive culture. By facilitating search, discovery and analysis across all three collections, ISEBEL provides researchers an unprecedented opportunity to discover patterns both within and across the target corpora. The proposed research, focusing on storytellers, legends and the dispersion of beliefs in magic, witchcraft, hauntings and supernatural beings seeks to reveal what ordinary people believed, and how storytelling traditions and story repertoires differed in and across these three areas.