19.008 digital microhistory

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 8.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 06:46:47 +0100
         From: Naomi Standen <naomi.standen_at_ncl.ac.uk>
         Subject: Re: 18.756 digital microhistory

>I guess what I'm doing is advocating for the creation and study of
>this kind of zoomable interface, which has meaning at all three of Bertin's
>level. It would also be important to create further tools to allow
>different ways of configuring the diagram/interface for different purposes,
>based on the kinds of information the (hypothetical) collection provides.

Do the following count?

Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, http://www.ecai.org/
Chinese Historical GIS, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/

They don't give you individuals (yet), but the principle is the same.
Locating individuals will become possible when Robert Hartwell's database
of 30,000 Chinese individuals is up and running and connected to the CHGIS,
thus giving options for considering data at the level of individuals, the
whole of the mapped area of what is now the PRC, and several geographical
levels and social groupings in between.

There are already several prosopographical databases up and running, which
Willard knows all about, since most of them are based at CCH! As far as I
know, however, these don't yet connect to maps/GIS-type presentations.

Naomi Standen

--
Dr. Naomi Standen               | School of Historical Studies, Armstrong
Building
Lecturer in Chinese History     | University of Newcastle, NE1 7RU
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