Databasing historical correspondence

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Peter Collopy

I’ve experimented a bit with using commercial database software—Filemaker Pro and Bento—to store the text of historical correspondence (i.e. letters) I’ve found in archives, making it searchable and sortable. I’d be happy to demonstrate my databases and would be interested as well in hearing from others working with correspondence digitally. We could also discuss grander projects like the Darwin Correspondence Project and open source tools that could be applied to such work.

Categories: Metadata, Session Proposals |

About Peter Collopy

I'm a historian of science and technology studying video as a technology that provoked Americans and Canadians to think in new ways about politics and consciousness in the years around 1970. I'm also occasionally a software developer, and I have unrealized ideas for timeline software and historical astronomical modeling, as well as realized ones for correspondence databases.

1 Response to Databasing historical correspondence

  1. Rebecca says:
    April 25, 2012 at 1:51 am

    I would be interested in seeing your project and hearing about the tools your using and the bigger context of presenting scholarly work digitally

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