MHDBDB Next: Researching Without a Database Server
Exciting Changes for the Middle High German Conceptual Database (MHDBDB)!
The Middle High German Conceptual Database (MHDBDB) is one of the longest-running digital research infrastructures in the field of Medieval German Studies. What began in 1972 as a PhD project based on punch cards, became one of the first humanities databases on the web in 1995, and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022, has now entered its most significant transformation to date. Since 2025, the MHDBDB has been undergoing a complete migration to the TEI XML standard, accompanied by the development of a database-independent research platform.
The previous MHDBDB infrastructure, including the Oracle database, RDF layer, and Salzburg server (all three versions remain available at https://mhdbdb.sbg.ac.at/) has been fully migrated into an open TEI repository.
The entire project is openly available on GitHub, and the website is now a freely accessible static site:
- Main portal with corpus search and playground:
https://dhcraft.org/mhdbdb-tei-only/ - GitHub repository (all TEI files, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0):
https://github.com/DigitalHumanitiesCraft/mhdbdb-tei-only - Citable via Zenodo DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20627656
Further information is available on the University of Salzburg Digital Humanities Blog:
DH Blog SalzburgHappy researching!