Mini Worldlit: A Dataset of Contemporary Fiction from 13 Countries, Nine Languages, and Five Continents

World literature plays a key role in understanding the global diversity of human storytelling. However, datasets suitable for large-scale cross-cultural analysis remain limited. Responding to the increasing digitization of literary texts and the need for more diverse and multilingual resources, we i...

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Main Authors: Andrew Piper, David Bamman, Christina Han, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Hoyt Long, Itay Marienberg-Milikowsky, Tom McEnaney, Mathias Iroro Orhero, Emrah Peksoy, Pallavi Rastogi, Sebastian Rasmussen, Roel Smeets, Alexandra Stuart, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Ubiquity Press 2025-01-01
Series:Journal of Open Humanities Data
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Online Access:https://account.openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com/index.php/up-j-johd/article/view/248
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Summary:World literature plays a key role in understanding the global diversity of human storytelling. However, datasets suitable for large-scale cross-cultural analysis remain limited. Responding to the increasing digitization of literary texts and the need for more diverse and multilingual resources, we introduce Mini Worldlit, a manually curated dataset of 1,192 works of contemporary fiction from 13 countries, representing nine languages across five continents. Mini Worldlit employs consistent cross-cultural selection criteria, overseen by scholarly experts, to ensure geographic, linguistic, and stylistic coherence. The dataset provides a foundation for future comparative studies of global literary cultures, offering a template for cross-cultural sampling. Our methodology pairs geographic boundaries with linguistic communities, enabling a structured exploration of world literature. This dataset is designed to facilitate a comparative approach to understanding literature and support the growing field of multilingual digital humanities.
ISSN:2059-481X