Abstract
Founders & Survivors is a multi-university and public collaborative project that is building a transnational and intergenerational dataset of life courses generated from the UNESCO recognised convict records of Tasmania. This chapter outlines the technical history of the project: mass digitization and archiving online of over 100,000 images, manual scholarly transcription and the building of a prosopography database. This comprises a relational genealogy database integrated with an XML (BaseX) source database. Individual life histories are compiled dynamically from diverse sources, linked by a combination of machine matching and human judgment, and managed by an independent link management module. Using Google Docs over 50 online volunteers crowdsourced the convict genealogies and coded the data. Manual linkage and scholarly verification remained essential for the collation of prosopographical data and manual coding was necessary for statistical analysis.
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Notes
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Using a combination of XQiB and conventional HTML hyperlinks and jQuery for AJAX. A combination of batch and live searching over the web is supported. The searches are a combination of XQuery Perl and shell scripts. Data is held in BaseX, using the TEI prosopography data model. Results are entered incrementally into the Yggdrasil relational genealogy database.
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The Police Number is unique within sex, and is made up of the first letter of the surname and a numeral.
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Unfortunately there is no index linking the two.
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Surnames were normalised e.g. by removing O’ from O’Connor, Mc from McAdam etc.
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Fuzziness in name matching is supported by NYSIIS and Soundex codes, XQuery free text searches and standard text matching.
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This will soon be rectified with a new transcription of the Tasmanian births, deaths and marriages organised by Rebecca Kippen.
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For further information on technical aspects contact Sandra.Silcot@unimelb.edu.au
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Checkers and Researchers: Nola Beagley, Geoff Brown, Tricia Curry, Lance Dwyer, Alison Ellett, Jennifer Elliston, Leanne Goss, Dr Cheryl Griffin, Jan Kerr, Maureen Mann, Garry McLoughlin, David Noakes, Teddie Oates, Judith Price, Steve Rhodes, the late Dr Cecile Trioli, Colin Tuckerman, Jenny Wells.
FCRC Coordinator: Colette McAlpine.
FCRC Advisor and Web administrator: Dr Trudy Mae Cowley.
Ships Project Researchers: Colleen Aralappu, Maureen Austin, Vivienne Cash, Dianne Cassidy, Glenda Cox, Kathy Dadswell, Margaret Dimech, Brian Dowse, Ros Escott, Barry Files, Peter Fitzpatrick, Dr Janet Gaff, Prof Nanette Gottlieb, Stuart Hamilton, Jane Harding, Robyn Harrison, Graeme Hickey, Margaret Inglis, Bronwyn King, Dr Jenny Kisler, Darryl Massie, Elizabeth Nelson, Margaret Nichols, Rosemary Noble (UK), Keith Oliver, Maureen O’Toole, Margaret Parsons, Annette Sutton, Robert Tuppen, Rob Weldon, Lyn Wilkinson, Glad Wishart, Jacqueline Wisniowski, Judith Wood.
Supporters who were on board for a time: Anne Cronin, Katie Donnelly, Mary Eckhardt, Christine Hearne, John Hobbs, Lynne Hogg, Stephanie Hume, Brenda Irwin, Eileen Luscombe, Fiona McLennan, John Mugridge, Wendy Paterson, Fay Pattison, Kevin Pattison, Lorraine Polglaze, Sarah Preston, Colleen Robinson, Gary Scapin, Suzanne Smith, Claire Stevenson, Beth Stott, Edward Thomas, Sue Wyatt.
Web designers: Claudine Chionh, Robin Petterd.
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Acknowledgments
We extend our heartfelt thanks to our colleagues in Tasmania, Guelph, Ohio, Oxford and Flinders and to Claudine Chionh. Above all we thank our volunteers.Footnote 19 This project is funded by the Australian Research Council, the Institute for the Broadband Enabled Society at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National Data Service.
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McCalman, J., Smith, L., Silcot, S., Kippen, R. (2015). Building a Life Course Dataset from Australian Convict Records: Founders & Survivors: Australian Life Courses in Historical Context, 1803–1920. In: Bloothooft, G., Christen, P., Mandemakers, K., Schraagen, M. (eds) Population Reconstruction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19884-2_14
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