Serial Administrative Records as Relational Event Data – Modelling Historical Collection Infrastructures: The Case of Two Viennese Herbaria

This presentation was delivered at the EADH 2026 Conference in Kraków and examines serial administrative records from the Herbarium of the University of Vienna (WU) and the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum Vienna (W) as relational historical data. The contribution explores how acquisition, exchange, loan, and related administrative records can be used to reconstruct historical collection infrastructures, material movements, institutional relations, and the broader conditions under which botanical knowledge was produced and circulated. It introduces a relational analytical approach based on shared coordinates of time, space, actors, artefacts, and structures, and shows how heterogeneous historical sources can be connected within a common analytical framework. A central focus is the concept of Data Resonance: documented relations are treated not only as evidence of what is explicitly recorded, but also as starting points for identifying implicit structures, archival asymmetries, and further research directions. The presentation situates botanical collections as an empirical starting point for investigating how scientific knowledge was produced, circulated, and authorized within larger historical systems of material, institutional, and colonial relations.