As part of my dissertation project, the data set shows, how far a story can travel and also sheds light on its potential to move people in a literal sense. The visitors of the Queenscourt manuscript chamber, who left their entries in the guestbook apparently deemed it worthwhile to take on the journey to Dvůr Králové nad Labem to take a look at the place, where the manuscript was found. Instead of going to Prague, to see the actual manuscript stored in the National Museum, they went to the place of its discovery. This mobility was induced by Václav Hanka's story of how he found the manuscript in the Dvůr Králové nad Labem church tower. He spread the story alongside the actual manuscript as it accompanied most of its publications. The guestbook bears witness to the spread of the story as it lists entries from various places of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and beyond and partially allows researchers to get to know the motivations of those people, who visited the place, where the Queenscourt Manuscript was found.
Pamětní kniha. Založena 17. září L. P. 1861. PT 14027, Městské muzeum Dvůr Králové nad Labem
Pamětní kniha kostelní kobky. Založena 17. září L. P. 1861. Opis 1970, RKZ 4820, Městské muzeum Dvůr Králové nad Labem
The data were collected on basis of two sources. First and foremost, the original guest book of the Queenscourt Manuscript chamber, which was started in 1861 and continuously signed until 1919 with some later additions, served as the source of the data set. Secondly, I made use of a handwritten faksimile of the original guest book, that was anonymously created in late 1968 and early 1969. The original guest book served as a main source, while the faksimile served mainly as orientation, where the original book was readable only with great difficulties. Both were consulted at the Municipal Museum of Dvůr Králové nad Labem (Městské muzeum Dvůr Králové nad Labem): Pamětní kniha. Založena 17. září L. P. 1861. PT 14027 and Pamětní kniha kostelní kobky. Založena 17. září L. P. 1861. Opis 1970, RKZ 4820. The entries of the guest book were then transcribed page by page ordering them in the direction of reading, i.e. top-to-bottom, left-to-right. Entries that were obviously grouped, e.g. by the use of brackets, were also grouped in the data set. The data set consists of one main sheet listing 4631 entries and four further sheets, which are based on this main sheet. Details are explained in the readme-file of the data set. For the support in creating and curating this data set, I would like to thank the staff of the Municipal Museum at Dvůr Králové nad Labem, the Bavarian-Czech Academic Agency for supporting my research at Dvůr Králové nad Labem and foremost NFDI4Memory for their FAIR Data Fellowship that allowed me to curate the data under the professional guidance of Anna-Lena Körfer from the Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung - Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft. This work was carried out in the framework of the Consortium for historical humanities 4Memory (www.4memory.de) as part of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for their financial support - Project number 50 1609550.
