URAP Project Descriptions

PhiloBiblon - BETA (Bibliography of Medieval Spanish Texts)

Oscar Perea-Rodriguez
Spanish and Portuguese

Applications for Fall 2025 are closed for this project.

PhiloBiblon is a database for the study of the Romance literatures and cultures of medieval and early modern Iberia (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Galician). It currently contains over 243,000 records thanks to forty years of work by dedicated volunteers in the U.S., Spain, and Portugal. It has become an indispensable resource for Hispanists because of its comprehensive coverage of primary sources, both manuscript and printed, the texts they contain, the individuals and institutions involved with the production and transmission of those sources and texts, the libraries holding them, relevant secondary references, and authority files for persons, places, and institutions.

This project has been directed since 1981 by Charles Faulhaber, professor emeritus of Spanish and director emeritus of The Bancroft Library. He will be fully engaged in working with URAP students.

Role: We are currently involved in the process of migrating all data from a proprietary relational database system to FactGrid, based on Wikibase, the linked-open-data platform that supports Wikidata and Wikipedia. Therefore, we are offering to UC Berkeley students the possibility of helping us finish this task by:
a) cleaning records on spreadsheets, thus enhancing your knowledge of the Office / OpenOffice / Google set of tools with our guidance.
b) adding new data to our database and/or to our blog, which will help you learn how to use Wkibase, PhP, and WordPress, as we;; as learning about OpenData models.
c) spreading the progress of the project through social networks and our Youtube channel, training your skills in combining images and texts by using Canva, CapCut, and / or Movavi, among others.
Our one-on-one meetings will polish your ability to intertwined technical skills with both previously / recently acquired literacy knowledge, following the basic principles of research in Digital Humanities.
All tasks would be performed completely remote, so that you would be able to manage your schedule at your entire convenience, provided that you fulfill the previously agreed amount of units.

Qualifications: Desirable:
Competence with standard spreadsheet and word processing software (Excel, Word, GoogleDocs/Sheets). Competence with social networks (Instagram, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit). Completed at least one course involving linguistics (in any department), Medieval and/or Golden Age literature of Spain, or data science. Knowledgeable in creating content for social media. If you have any previous knowledge of data science, knowledge of HTML, and / or programming experience, please mention that in your application.

Hours: to be negotiated

Off-Campus Research Site: Most of the work will be performed remotely with own computer.

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