crowdsourcing historical research
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Crowdsourcing Historical Research
Claudine ChionhDrupal Downunder 2012
Founders and Survivors
• Study of the 73,000 convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) between 1803 and 1853
• Records from the convict system and elsewhere• Health, environment, lifestyle, wellbeing• Effects on health and resilience of descendants
http://foundersandsurvivors.org/
Goals of the project
• Compile (health and demographic) data about this population from a range of sources
• Enable other researchers to use this data• Explore quantitative and geographic tools and analyses that are
not commonly used in historical research• Combine professional expertise with the enthusiasm of
volunteers
Some research projects
• Morbidity and mortality on the voyage to Australia• Crime and convicts in Tasmania, 1853-1900• Fertility decline in late C19 Tasmania• Prostitution and female convicts• Tracing convicts' descendants who served in WWI
http://foundersandsurvivors.org/research
Project staff
• Historians• Demographers• Epidemiologists• Two part-time developers
Who are our users?
• Research team• Other interested researchers• Genealogists/family historians• Local historians
Data sources
• Conduct records• Surgeons' journals• Newspaper reports• Births, deaths, marriages• Parish records• Family histories, memories, legends
Official/formal sources
Records from the convict system
• Trial, conviction documents• Conduct records• Ship surgeons' journals• Permissions to marry• Ticket of leave
Outside the convict system
• Births, deaths, marriages• Later convictions
Paper databases
Broader historical context:
• Mass transportation• Modern record-keeping and statistics
Informal sources
• Newspaper reports• Family history: primary sources, compiled genealogies, anecdote
and legend
Our volunteers
• Amateur historians, genealogists• Librarians• IT specialists
How volunteers can contribute
• Individual convict biographies• Tracing batches of convicts in ships
Solutions
• XML database• Drupal• Google Docs
The Founders and Survivors database
• XML (based on Text Encoding Initiative http://www.tei-c.org/)• BaseX XML database engine http://basex.org/
Experimenting with Drupal
• Used an older version of Migrate to import some tabular data as nodes
• Problem of scale: 73,000 convicts• XML approach proved to be more efficient
Getting data into our system
Formal sources
• Collected by archives and individual researchers• CSV, Excel, Filemaker, Access ...• Incorporated into BaseX database with Perl scripts
Informal sources
• Individual convicts' life histories are captured in a Drupal content type ('Community contributed content')
• Some sub-projects also capture summary data in Google spreadsheets
Viewing data
• Master database in BaseX: presented in XSLT, different views for logged in researchers and others
• Community contributed content (CCC): Drupal• Two-way link between master database and CCC• Google spreadsheets prepopulated with links to corresponding
records in master database
Data capture
• Convict biographies captured in Drupal – Community Contributed Content (CCC)
• Linked to entry in XML database• Perl scripts to incorporate CCC records into master database
XML entry for an individual convict
Prepopulated Drupal form
Community contributed content
Ships (batches of data)
• Tracing all convicts on a ship• Summary data in Google Spreadsheets• Spreadsheets are prepopulated from the master database
Ship summary data in Google Spreadsheets
Drupal can't do everything
• Scale• Complexity• Expertise
Where Drupal is appropriate for our project
• Web frontend• Data capture• Collaboration, forums
Summary
• Massive XML database with complex relations• Drupal for capturing slightly complex data and facilitating
collaboration• Google Spreadsheets for capturing tabular data
Questions?
Founders and Survivors
http://foundersandsurvivors.org/
inquiries@foundersandsurvivors.org
Claudine Chionh
http://www.onefewercar.net/
claudine@chionh.org
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