Western Sephardic Diaspora Roadmap: porquê e para quê um roteiro para o estudo da diáspora sefardita

Abstract

This chapter presents the motivations, objectives, structure and methodologies of the Western Sephardic Diaspora Roadmap (WSD Roadmap) project, initiated in January 2021 and developed by CHAM — Centre for the Humanities and the Digital Humanities Lab of the Institute of Contemporary History, both at the NOVA University of Lisbon — School of Social Sciences and Humanities. This project, which combines the studies of the Western Sephardic Diaspora with the methodologies of Digital Humanities and Information Sciences, aims to create an online, open access portal, which aggregates descriptions of European and non-European archival collections with materials of interest for the study of the Sephardic Diaspora and its antecedents. This chapter begins by sharing some of the challenges that accompanied the first phase of the project and the solutions devised by the team. It then goes on to present the methods applied in building the data model and making it available online, using the Omeka S platform. Finally, the first results of the initial phase of the project are revealed, which focused on surveying collections held by Portuguese archives and libraries with documentation related to the Sephardic Diaspora and, especially to the Jewish communities prior to the expulsion of the late fifteenth century.