On Monday, 17 November 2025, 4.15–6.30 pm,  Dr. Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter (Münster) will give a guest lecture on the topic of “Metadaten, ‚forschende Erschließung‘ und die Konstitution kultureller Gegenstände” (“Metadata, ‘research-based indexing’ and the constitution of cultural objects”) (venue: Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster):

Access to cultural goods has always been facilitated by indexing: exhibit labels in museums, catalogue cards in libraries, finding aids in archives. When cultural goods become data, they must also be indexed, in this case through ‘data about data’: metadata. The value of collection portals or digital libraries is largely determined by the quality of this metadata. What cannot be found cannot be received. However, metadata is also itself the subject of research in the digital humanities, and its analysis becomes part of ‘research-based indexing’ (Lina Franken). The lecture explores this interrelationship using three short case studies between art and science, museums and libraries. The aim is to show that metadata constitutes cultural artefacts in the digital space.

Dr. Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter (Centre for Philosophy of Science, University of Münster) heads the DFG project ‘PRODATPHIL – Science and Logic’ on the development and evaluation of a data collection for logic and philosophy of science between 1830 and 1920. After working at the FernUniversität Hagen, he taught at a Moscow university until 2022. His research focuses on the interface between philosophy and digital humanities and on the history of philosophy between Melanchthon and Kant.