Designing Databases for Historical Research
Historical Research Handbook: Designing Databases for Historical Research
A. Introduction
The purpose of this Historical Research Handbook is to provide an introduction to designing databases for use in historical research. It will provide an overview of important concepts – both historical in nature and in terms of databases – that the historian will need to consider before embarking upon designing a database, and it will provide a number of starting points for overcoming certain design problems that specifically affect historians when they come to wrestle their sources into a database. This Handbook does not cover the actual construction of databases for historical research in any practical manner.