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SUMMARY:Historical life cycle reconstruction by indexing - Gerrit Bloothoo
 ft (Universiteit Utrecht)
DTSTART:20160912T103000Z
DTEND:20160912T110000Z
UID:TALK67309@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:INI IT
DESCRIPTION:<span>Co-authors: Jelte van Boheemen (Utrecht  University)\, M
 arijn Schraagen (Utrecht University) <br></span> <br>Historical informatio
 n about individuals is usually scattered across many  sources. An integrat
 ed use of all available information is then needed to  reconstruct their l
 ife cycles. Rather than comparing records between pairs of  sources\, it w
 ill be shown to be computationally effective to combine all data in  a sin
 gle table. In such a table\, each record summarizes the information that c
 an  be deducted for a person who shows up in a source event. The idea is t
 hat this  table should be ordered in such a way that consecutive records d
 escribe the life  cycle events of an unique individual\, for one individua
 l after another\, where  each individual has its own ID. To arrive at this
  situation\, it is necessary to  filter and index the table in two ways\, 
 depending on the possible roles of an  individual: the first as ego in foc
 us (at birth\, marriage and decease)\, the  second as parent at the same l
 ife events of children. The results of both  indexes (in terms of prelimin
 ary record clusters and IDs) should be combined\,  while resulting cluster
 s should be tested for validity of the life cycle. <br> <span><br>The succ
 ess of such a procedure strongly depends on the available data and  its qu
 ality. The Dutch civil registration\, introduced by the French in 1811 and
   now largely digitized\, provides quite optimal conditions. Remaining pro
 blems of  data fuzziness can be circumvented by name standardization (to v
 arious levels of  name reduction) and by testing different sequences of th
 e available information  in records for indexing. Both approaches are only
  effective when there is more  information available then needed to identi
 fy an individual uniquely &ndash\; which in  many cases seems to be the ca
 se for the Dutch civil registration. An example of  the procedure will be 
 given for data for the province of Zeeland\, while options  for applicatio
 n of the method to older data of (much) less quality and  completeness wil
 l be discussed. The latter touches upon the limits of historical  life cyc
 le reconstruction.</span>
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
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