Site icon The GDELT Project

Gemini For Museums: Organizing Our Estonian Holdings By Publishing Dynasty With A Single Prompt

Kalev Leetaru

As we were adding several recent acquisitions to our Estonian History Collection, Gemini flagged something fascinating to us: that one of the books we were adding to our catalog was published by the same Kohler printing dynasty that published our two Estonian Bibles (the first and second editions) and that it was also connected to the Lindfors house that published another of the new books we were adding, as well as that the first and expanded editions of the new Swedish Livonia law book aquisitions were both published by the Noller family. This got us wondering what other publishing patterns might be found in our collection. We never got around to actually researching or cataloging the publisher for the majority of our Estonian works yet, so there is no codified electronic catalog with a "publisher" field that we could just group by in Excel. What about Gemini? It turns out that just pointing Gemini to our Estonian History Collection page and giving it a single prompt asking it to organize the works by publishing dynasty, Gemini actually looked up the publisher for all of the works, connected dynasties by marriage and mergers and gave us back a list in a few seconds. That Gemini was able to do this so rapidly and connect the dots on how various dynasties interconnected over time is nothing short of remarkable and suggests that it can be a powerful new organizational tool for collections managers.

Here is the prompt we used :

group all of our Estonian works by publishing family and return just the families that published multiple works in this list:
https://blog.gdeltproject.org/gemini-for-museums-using-gemini-deep-research-to-curate-a-collection-of-estonian-history-into-a-national-founding-narrative/

Based on both dynastic printing houses and direct business successions, the publishing families and lineages that produced multiple works in this collection are:

1. The Köhler – Lindfors Printing Dynasty (Reval / Tallinn)This represents a single continuous family printing house in Reval. Founded by Jacob Johann Köhler, the press was run by his widow after his death, and subsequently passed via family marriage and succession to Axel Heinrich Lindfors.

2. The Hondius – Janssonius Cartographic Family (Amsterdam)Jodocus Hondius and Johannes Janssonius were bound by marriage and operated as a connected cartographic dynasty in Amsterdam. Janssonius married Jodocus Hondius's daughter (Elisabeth Hondius) in 1612 and went on to co-publish the Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius atlases with his brother-in-law, Henricus Hondius.

3. The Nöller Family (Riga)Operated by the royal printer Georg Matthias Nöller, whose family printing house served as the official press for the Swedish Crown and provincial administration in Riga.

4. The Parikas Brothers (Tallinn)Founded and operated by brothers Johannes Parikas and Peeter Parikas, whose photography and publishing house (J. & P. Parikas) produced Estonia's premier illustrated national albums during the interwar period.

(Note: If including binding and craft ateliers alongside print publishers, the Eduard Taska Workshop in Tallinn also accounts for two works in the list: the 1930 presentation copy of Eesti, Esthonie, Esthonia, Estland and the 1935 presentation copy of Kalevipoeg.)

 

To illustrate the list above, here are the four works by the Kohler/Lindfors dynasty that we hold:

1739: First Complete Estonian Bible (Piibli Ramat) — Printed by Jacob Johann Köhler

1757: The Superior Court Ordinance of Reval — Printed by the Widow of Jacob Johann Köhler

1773: Second Edition of the Estonian Bible — Printed by the Köhler / Lindfors press

1777: Royal Swedish Laws of the Duchy of Estonia — Published by Axel Heinrich Lindfors

 

Exit mobile version