Hosted by: David M- PHD at George Mason

-Looked at travelers between US and Mexico before 1856

-Organizing with Excel but thinks their could be some database versatility

-Trying to incorporate more visual stuff into his spread sheets, Excel is possible but very difficult to get it done, Google Sheets seems to be more user friendly for this

-Google sheets and election—> Washington Post directed people to Google Sheets to help track popular votes in past election

-Excel vs Google Sheets vs Sequel:

-Excel has proved its longevity and that no matter the improvements Google Sheets may make, Excel will still have its own usefulness.

-Excel is very helpful for social network analysis

-Google Sheets makes communicating information with other people fairly easy as it can be exported into a number of different of formats including Excel

-Sequel is good for large networks as it allows you to create separate tables for specific criteria

Multiple spreadsheets vs single spreadsheets for extensive databases:

-Multiple spreadsheets seems to be more helpful for different pieces of information about same topic instead of compiling all into single spreadsheet with numerous pages

-No one database is right for a specific topic: Many different databases can work for same topic, At the end of the day, it all depends on what exactly you are looking for, and user preference.

-Issues with historical databases: Spelling “conventions” took a long time to settle down so people may be referring to one person but are spelling it in many different ways so hard to keep accurate track of individuals

-One solution to this is the Open Refined Program (open refined.org): Source for when you have messy data to help clean up your data and clarify potential inaccuracies, spelling errors, etc