Database of Czech Literary Awards

Literary awards constitute a significant entity within literary communication, functioning as indicators of symbolic capital and professional recognition within the literary field. As outcomes of collective expert judgement, prizes shape authors’ careers, influence publishing strategies, and affect the reception and visibility of literary works. The so-called ‘Nobel effect’ represents the most widely discussed example of this phenomenon, yet recent scholarship has examined literary awards from a broader range of perspectives, including language, gender, categorisation, and market dynamics. This paper introduces the Database of Czech Literary Awards (CLA), developed within the Czech Literary Bibliography research infrastructure. The database currently records 120 prizes, approximately 1,500 annual instalments, over 4,000 associated individuals, and nearly 3,000 awarded works, thereby providing near-comprehensive coverage of Czech literary prizes. Organised around three core entities — awards, persons, and literary works — the data model (based on an adapted MARC21 authority format) enables the systematic recording of award histories, prize categories, committee memberships, and awarded titles, including distinctions and rankings. Since 2026, the CLA has undergone FAIRification within the national Open Science II project and is being made available in standardised formats, with Linked Open Data representation planned. Its integration into the broader CLB data ecosystem enables interoperability with related knowledge bases and facilitates large-scale analyses of institutional networks, publishing patterns, and the role of literary awards in both historical and contemporary literary communication.