Databases in Historical Research


Book Description

This textbook builds knowledge progressively and sympathetically, from first principles to advanced topics. The authors explain how to take a project from the specification stage to completion, and offer guidance on choice of approach, techniques, hardware and software. Key ideas are presented in a readily understandable form through the use of diagrams and summary boxes, and the text is brought to life through the use of case studies. An ideal handbook for the undergraduate, postgraduate and professional historian embarking on a dissertation or historical research.




Data, computers and the past


Book Description




Database and Expert Systems Applications


Book Description

The Database and Expert Systems Applications - DEXA - conferences are dedi cated to providing an international forum for the presentation of applications in the database and expert systems field, for the exchange of ideas and experiences, and for defining requirements for the future systems in these fields. After the very promising DEXA 90 in Vienna, Austria, we hope to have successfully established wjth this year's DEXA 91 a stage where scientists from diverse fields interested in application-oriented research can present and discuss their work. This year there was a total of more than 250 submitted papers from 28 different countries, in all continents. Only 98 of the papers could be accepted. The collection of papers in these proceedings offers a cross-section of the issues facing the area of databases and expert systems, i.e., topics of basic research interest on one hand and questions occurring when developing applications on the other. Major credit for the success of the conference goes to all of our colleagues who submitted papers for consideration and to those who have organized and chaired the panel sessions. Many persons contributed numerous hours to organize this conference. The names of most of them will appear on the following pages. In particular we wish to thank the Organization Committee Chairmen Johann Gordesch, A Min Tjoa, and Roland Wag ner, who also helped establishing the program. Special thanks also go to Gabriella Wagner and Anke Ruckert. Dimitris Karagiannis General Conference Chairman Contents Conference Committee.




Bibliographic Access to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts


Book Description

This practical book is a detailed guide to various databases and computer services worldwide that provide access to medieval manuscripts. Covering everything from First Century Latin texts and ancient Greek manuscripts to medieval and Renaissance mathematical studies, Bibliographic Access to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts provides thorough descriptions of electronic cataloging methods and the databanks either in progress or in existence that include these manuscripts. Five independent systems of cataloging these materials with computers and PCs are explained and evaluated in detail. This thorough volume features a discussion of the difficulties of using MARCs and AMCs to handle manuscript descriptions for which they were not designed and offers new ideas for meeting the needs of individual users and the needs of libraries networking through computer systems. Authoritative contributors include international experts in the use of computers for humanistic research and prominent scholars in the history of science and mathematics, medieval history and literature, and cartography. The helpful chapters contain valuable information on computer systems created to function as information retrieval catalogs for book descriptions in readable formats. Researchers will appreciate the practical advice for locating and using manuscripts and rare books in libraries. Archivists and rare collections librarians will find this a helpful and in-depth tool in finding information on successful cataloging and access to medieval sources.




Quantitative Methods for Historians


Book Description

The pioneering texts in quantitative history were written over two decades ago, but as a command of methodological context, computer experience, and statistical literacy have become increasingly important to the study of history, the need for an introductory text addressing these matters has increased. Quantitative Methods for Historians is a theoretical and practical guide for the application of quantitative analysis in historical research. It is designed for students of history and related disciplines who are curious about the possibilities of quantification and want to learn more about its recent development. Integrating the use of the statistical packages SAS and SPSS with the quantitative method, the authors discuss techniques for defining a problem, proceed to the building of a data set and the use of statistical methods, and conclude with the interpretation of results. The data set section concentrates on the basics of formalized research, discussing the coding process and the more complicated problems of data transformation and linkage. The statistical parts systematically build upon traditional fundamentals and introduce new analytical techniques for qualitative variables. Intended as a working introduction to quantitative methods, this guide also provides additional information on advanced statistical techniques and discusses questions of historical computing, reflecting critically on the proper role of quantitative methods.




New Technologies for the Humanities


Book Description

No detailed description available for "New Technologies for the Humanities".




Production and Consumption in English Households 1600-1750


Book Description

This economic, social and cultural analysis of the nature and variety of production and consumption activities in households in Kent and Cornwall yields important new insights on the transition to capitalism in England.




Prosopography and Computer


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The Medieval Antecedents of English Agricultural Progress


Book Description

Until recently, historians tended to stress the perceived technological and ecological shortcomings of medieval agriculture. The ten essays assembled in this volume offer a contrary view. Based upon close documentary analysis of the demesne farms managed for and by lords, they show that, by 1300, in the most commercialized parts of England, production decisions were based upon relative factor costs and commodity prices. Moreover, when and where economic conditions were ripe and environmental and institutional circumstances favourable, medieval cultivators successfully secured high and ecologically sustainable levels of land productivity. They achieved this by integrating crop and livestock production into the sort of manure-intensive systems of mixed-husbandry which later underpinned the more celebrated output growth of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If medieval agriculture failed to fulfill the production potential provided by wider adoption of such systems, this is more appropriately explained by the want of the kind of market incentives that might have justified investment, innovation, and specialization on the scale that characterized the so-called 'agricultural revolution', than either the lack of appropriate agricultural technology or the innate 'backwardness' of medieval cultivators.