Historical Events Database - History

[Mikey]

Re: Historical Events Database

I haven't had much time this past week or two. But KJN and I will be glad to help out with copy-editing and formatting. We'll give peeps here a chance to go over their entries first, then we'll plug in and no doubt have lots of questions. But with some effort, we can get it done!

Thanks, that's good to know. One of the last (and major) steps before publication will certainly be that people with a 'fresh pair of eyes' will look at every single entry, read it in full, and do any of the following: approve, fix and approve, or reject. Hopefully more people will help out with that.

For now, we still have to enter more data, fix formatting and 'beef up' citations so that none of the entered data are ambiguous.

Regarding the latter point, ambiguousity due to poorly formatted citations, I think I'll have to go in and change how the database application works one more time. One of the things I haven't foreseen from the beginning was that several citations would be used for each event. So today I'm going to experiment with the following: instead of the free-text, general-purpose Quote and Notes fields, the meanings of which was always a bit blurry, and which have been used differently by each contributor, I'll try to make all sources (books, articles, web) and multiple quotations into separate logical entities. I'll report back later when I've found out more.

 

[Mikey]

Re: Historical Events Database

I need to do some data analysis and manual data correction. Others making changes to the database at the same time would interfere with that, so I've locked the database for the time being. It could be a couple of days before the database is accessible again.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Historical Events Database

I need to do some data analysis and manual data correction. Others making changes to the database at the same time would interfere with that, so I've locked the database for the time being. It could be a couple of days before the database is accessible again.

Good deal. I have not edit any of my entries until I hear a "go-ahead".

 

[Zadig]

Re: Historical Events Database

Have you been doing that too?

Not yet.

Where does the text "The plague first arrived ..." come from? It this a citation of Leister K. Little? Or is it your own editorial comment?

Both; for clarity, I merge my editorial comments with the secondary sources in one article.

If I use 10 secondary sources to comment on 1 event, it’s useless to make 10 citations verbatim et literatim, to summarize, in the end, the 10 quotations in a logical development.

 

[seek10]

Re: Historical Events Database

seek10 143 - still interested in editing your events?

Sure, I will edit them when the DB is available as per the instructions mentioned here. I covered Dio cassius's 'Roman History' books. There are lot of multifaceted events in Dio cassius version which were entered as separate events but with the same text. I can merge them. I have a excel backup of all the fields entered which I can merge.

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

No ancient author:
I have done some entries for annals in which I have got a modern author/editor/translator but no original/ancient author/chronicler (e.g. The Annals of Fulda). The modern authors are authors at least for their "explanation part" (which I did not include in the database) but not for the source text part. So most probably I have to put their name in the editor and translator field and leave the author field / original author field empty? Or do I put "Anonymous" in the original author field and maybe also in the author field?

Own translation
Next issue: I translated a couple of texts from German to English (Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae / Sachsengeschichte). And Zadig seemed to have translated a couple of texts from French to English; at least there were some for Fredegar (which I replaced by others which already had an English translation). At least mine may have grammar issues as I am not an native speaker. Therefore I marked them in notes field with something like "translation by me". Is there some prove reading planned. If yes, how is the process?

Feedback is very much appreciated. Thanks

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Re: Historical Events Database

No ancient author:
I have done some entries for annals in which I have got a modern author/editor/translator but no original/ancient author/chronicler (e.g. The Annals of Fulda). The modern authors are authors at least for their "explanation part" (which I did not include in the database) but not for the source text part. So most probably I have to put their name in the editor and translator field and leave the author field / original author field empty? Or do I put "Anonymous" in the original author field and maybe also in the author field?

These modern authors quote their sources, right? If so, I'd suggest putting the source of the "source text" (i.e., the ancient author) in the author field, then putting a quote after the "explanation part" using the format Data gave (Last Name, Year). Keep track of the bibliographic reference, and it will be added to the bibliography.

Own translation
Next issue: I translated a couple of texts from German to English (Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae / Sachsengeschichte). And Zadig seemed to have translated a couple of texts from French to English; at least there were some for Fredegar (which I replaced by others which already had an English translation). At least mine may have grammar issues as I am not an native speaker. Therefore I marked them in notes field with something like "translation by me". Is there some prove reading planned. If yes, how is the process?

KJN and I will be proofreading all entries. If we have questions about translations, we'll ask here.

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

Thank you very much for the heads-up Approaching Infinity.

No ancient author:
I have done some entries for annals in which I have got a modern author/editor/translator but no original/ancient author/chronicler (e.g. The Annals of Fulda). The modern authors are authors at least for their "explanation part" (which I did not include in the database) but not for the source text part. So most probably I have to put their name in the editor and translator field and leave the author field / original author field empty? Or do I put "Anonymous" in the original author field and maybe also in the author field?

These modern authors quote their sources, right? If so, I'd suggest putting the source of the "source text" (i.e., the ancient author) in the author field, then putting a quote after the "explanation part" using the format Data gave (Last Name, Year). Keep track of the bibliographic reference, and it will be added to the bibliography.

The early medieval text often do not have an known author. A couple of persons wrote down some "chronicle" and this text is somewhere "copied" "a couple" of times. No author/chronicler or title was passed through the ages to our time. When an annal / chronicle has got a author/chronicler I will put him in the author field. And I will leave the author field and ancient author field blank, when there is no known original author/authors. Please tell if this should be done differently.

The books contain the original text in many chapters and some comments and explanatory text from the modern author. For example you may buy Caesars "Gallic Wars" (original text in many chapters) and the books contains some introduction about the time and the people and some text interpretation (explanatory text). With my sources this is the same but original author is just missing.

Own translation
Next issue: I translated a couple of texts from German to English (Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae / Sachsengeschichte). And Zadig seemed to have translated a couple of texts from French to English; at least there were some for Fredegar (which I replaced by others which already had an English translation). At least mine may have grammar issues as I am not an native speaker. Therefore I marked them in notes field with something like "translation by me". Is there some prove reading planned. If yes, how is the process?

KJN and I will be proofreading all entries. If we have questions about translations, we'll ask here.

Thanks :)

 

[shijing]

Re: Historical Events Database

Well, in this case, there might be something useful to be learned if there IS an ancient source while others ignore it... one might assume it was "covered up".

Because, really, they have no way of knowing which exact year unless there IS an ancient source!!!

So, if they are saying this, there must be a basis for it so see if you can track it down.

I've been able to track at least one reference to the 19 AD earthquake to the following source:

G. L. Arvanitakis, "Essai sur le ciimat de Jerusalem," Bulletin de l'Institut Egyptien, serie 4, 4, 178-189, 1903.

I've linked to an online copy, where you can find the reference on p. 178 (toward the bottom). The historical source the author lists is "Les histoires de la Palestine et les guides", but I haven't been able to find anything on that yet. Still looking...

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Re: Historical Events Database

The early medieval text often do not have an known author. A couple of persons wrote down some "chronicle" and this text is somewhere "copied" "a couple" of times. No author/chronicler or title was passed through the ages to our time. When an annal / chronicle has got a author/chronicler I will put him in the author field. And I will leave the author field and ancient author field blank, when there is no known original author/authors. Please tell if this should be done differently.

The books contain the original text in many chapters and some comments and explanatory text from the modern author. For example you may buy Caesars "Gallic Wars" (original text in many chapters) and the books contains some introduction about the time and the people and some text interpretation (explanatory text). With my sources this is the same but original author is just missing.

Yeah, if an ancient text doesn't have an author, it's standard to leave it blank. But try to be sure to include the name of the source, which should have a name (e.g., "The Chronicle of Blah Blah" or whatever).

 

[seek10]

Re: Historical Events Database

I came across this 3 days old article while looking for synapsis of James Tabor's work. I am not sure whether this is useful or not.

Jerusalem Ruins: 70 CE Roman Destruction or 363 CE Earthquake?

_http://jamestabor.com/2015/01/04/jerusalem-ruins-70-ce-roman-destruction-or-363-ce-earthquake/

Evidence seems to favor(mostly) 363 CE earthquake.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

I came across this 3 days old article while looking for synapsis of James Tabor's work. I am not sure whether this is useful or not.

Jerusalem Ruins: 70 CE Roman Destruction or 363 CE Earthquake?

_http://jamestabor.com/2015/01/04/jerusalem-ruins-70-ce-roman-destruction-or-363-ce-earthquake/

Evidence seems to favor(mostly) 363 CE earthquake.

I think we have multiple entries for the 363 earthquake and it's not so relevant to our purposes whether those particular stones were due to the earthquake or the Flavian destruction. The razing of Jerusalem at the time of the war is pretty much a given, though it may not have been total as this guy points out. Further, Jerusalem was rebuilt some time after and renamed following which there was yet another rebellion (Bar Kochba, 135 AD) and then a couple more hundred years went by (which he discusses briefly in the linked article).

He makes good points, though, that there was a later destructive event that did more damage than the Romans.

 

[Mikey]

Re: Historical Events Database

Short update:

I'm still working on the database(s). Actually we have two databases now: "The Chronicle of the Fall" and "Caesar" (see screenshots). Both are really one system, and store all the data in one big database and contain different events. I've styled them a little bit! :) I've been discussing implementation details with Approaching Infinity and Atreides. Basically, the goal is to learn from past mistakes and make the DB application fit for a wide variety of sources (ancient and modern), remove any potential for ambiguity for the data entry by the users to allow for easier automatic publication generation (PDF/print, ebook, public web interface). Features I'm working on:

- Ability to attach an arbitrary number of texts/quotations to one event, which are sortable via drag-and-drop.
- Ability to define sources (books, articles, web sources) separatly, and only ONCE. They then can be attached and re-used for all entered quotations.
- Remove the need to do manual citations (which is difficult, tedious, and error-prone). The system will be able to generate standards-compliant citations from the details entered (volume, book, chapters, verses, pages etc.)
- Multiple locations for each event, linked to the Pleiades project (http://pleiades.stoa.org). This will allow us to plot geographical maps later if we feel fancy.

Right now I'm doing some semi-automatic data migration and clean-up work, which is very tedious. Later we all will have to do some manual fixing work to do.

I'll report back when there are more news.

 

[Palinurus]

Re: Historical Events Database

Thanks for the update, Data. If I understand all this correctly, you're aiming at a completely new level of professionalism for this whole endeavor.

Interesting! (to quote Spock, from the original Star Trek series).

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

- Ability to attach an arbitrary number of texts/quotations to one event, which are sortable via drag-and-drop.
- Ability to define sources (books, articles, web sources) separatly, and only ONCE. They then can be attached and re-used for all entered quotations.

This sounds if you will/could use something like a relational database in the background?

This would avoid to have double content for different lines. One could connect e.g. one quote to different types of events or also different ancient authors. You would have not only one table with "everything in one line" but a couple of tables. Each line of each table has got something like an identifier for this database element line. You connect the different entries of 2 or more tables with something like connector tables.

Sorry I did not mention this earlier. I learned this years ago and only very basic. So maybe this is a little bit cryptic and most probably I did not use the right termini.

_https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationale_Datenbank
_https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database
_https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle)

You are doing a great work to clean this Augeas stable. This looks really good IMO, Data.