CoCo is a multidisciplinary consortium that integrates letter catalogue metadata from cultural heritage (CH) institutions in Finland into a single reconciled Linked Open Data infrastructure and publishes analysis tools on an open semantic portal, where a researcher can discern at a glance a whole web of connections with their object of study, the available letter collections and their keepers. The project enables us to conduct empirical, bottom-up case studies on
epistolary culture and social networks in the Grand Duchy of Finland (1809–1917), ask ambitious research questions in the field of computer science and make currently scattered, heterogeneous epistolary metadata interoperable and available.

The consortium is funded by the Academy of Finland (decision numbers 339828, 340834 and 339918), and it will take place in 2021–2025.

We are still actively collecting letter metadata. We sincerely hope to also collect data from smaller cultural heritage organisations, such as local heritage institutions and local museums. If you or your institution/organisation is in possession of letter data from around the period of the Grand Duchy of Finland (1809–1917), you can fill out our web survey on 19th-century letter catalogues here. All information about surviving 19th-century letter collections, their extents and storage locations is valuable, even if electronic cataloging or description information for the material is not available for the time being.

If you have any questions regarding the questionnaire or data submission, please contact Hanna-Leena Paloposki (hanna-leena.paloposki@finlit.fi).