Building History Databases: What’s Overkill?
Transcribed by: Sydney Thatcher
- US and Mexican travelers 1846 across border
- More quantitative information then expected
- Ship manifests- which includes some data such as names of people and where they came from
- Historians build these data bases for their own use to organize personal data or is it a way to also share the date with other researchers
- Hard to maintain an open access database with such information
- There was a guy in the New York times who made a Google sheet and anyone could see
- Access and Filemaker you merely see a page at a time
- Excel allows you to see 50 entries at the same time
- Google sheets is also good so that multiple people can collaborate in one place
- Quantifying Kissinger- an example of how excel can have visualizations
- Mapping, visualizations, and social network analysis
- Gephi- is a plug in for visualization
- Geolayout- applies latitude and longitude
- Gene Bower- Theory in DH, the relations you build into a database is how you can get the information out of your database
- Hard to determine if simple data that can be held in an excel sheet can answer larger questions about the history of the time
- Create multiple sheets for different information on excel
- Heuristnetwork.org– possible in between source between an excel sheet and a database
- Put in your info and how you want them to connect
- Sequal- to be able to link multiple ships and people together
- Openrefine.org – allows you to clean up messy data such as in an excel sheet
- Carto.org
- Robust mapping tool, which also has a timeline feature
- Quantifying Kissinger is a good source for ideas of different kinds of visualizations that could be used with substantial excel skills
- Node excel- add excel sheets and play with them
- As Diana Cline has used
- Paledio- is another source for visual constructions
- Lincoln Mullin- statistical analysis and visual analysis
- Introtodh2016.web.unc.ed/workshops/mapping
- Has some examples of mapping sources
- Neat line
- Presentation, carto, D3- are more researching tools
- D3- is a java script system but can allow you to put in research the way you want to see it
