Building History Databases: What’s Overkill?

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
Categories: Archives, Data Mining |

About Hope Gillespie

I am a Junior Archaeology major at GW and have just returned from 6 months overseas backipacking and studying at the University of Glasgow.