Correspondence was the “information superhighway” for s scholars and researchers during the early modern world. The Department of Comenius Studies of the Institute of Philosophy AS CR is one of the closest partners in a project based at the University of Oxford titled Cultures of Knowledge. Between 1550 and 1750, regular exchanges of letters encouraged the formation of virtual communities of people worldwide with shared interests in various kinds of knowledge. Included were classical scholars, philologists, antiquaries, patristic scholars, orientalists, theologians, astronomers, botanists, experimental natural philosophers, emissaries’, ‘free-thinkers,’ and many other denizens of the “Republic of Letters.” Since 2009, the Cultures of Knowledge project at Oxford University has been using a variety of research methods to reassemble and understand these networks. Supporting this effort is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As well as co-organizing the inaugural series of workshops in Prague, Cracow and Budapest, and the 2010 Universal Reformation conference in Oxford, both Institutes have also been active throughout the project in preparing the Comenius catalogue for Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO). and Vladimír Urbánek.
The advanced use of digital technologies, the existence of freely accessible structured knowledge bases, the increasing level of standardization and the needs of the scientific community offer those who process bibliographical data qualitatively new options for processing such data. In line with current trends in accessing scientific data, which are also reflected in the development of scientific policies (FAIR principles, open science, linkable open data, etc.), the issue of the re-use of existing datasets is gaining in importance. The present text uses the example of the Literarybibliography.eu portal to indicate the options for creating an international subject bibliography for literary studies from existing data sources, while discussing both the theoretical concept behind the project and the technological and methodological issues involved in the creation of such a bibliography, especially the harmonization and further enhancement of the source data.