The rubric for IT-MA has the culmination of this unit as the design and construction of a database drawn from a historical source chosen by the student together with a report documenting the database and the sorts of historical questions it could be used to investigate. Hopefully, this document will translate this into practice. NB. Roger Middleton has some copies of last year's projects which provide a model to work from.

Imagine a matrix of A columns (where A is greater than or equal to 5) and B rows where the columns are database fields and the rows are database records and where A*B equals 200 and can be spread across one or more database tables. This translates into a database of various forms: with 5 fields there would need to be 40 records, with 8 fields there would be 25 records. Your database needs to fulfil the criteria for A and B, and also:

In the IT-MA web pages p006d.htm provides details of further reading. The journal History & Computing reports many examples of databases constructed by historians, while Harvey and Press (1996) provides a superb introduction to DBMS and their uses for historians.

In the library there are a number of networked CD-ROMs which provide possible sources for a database, and I would particularly highlight Who's who (since 1897) as a source rich in possibilities. Others electronic sources which look promising include the Financial Times, PROfiles 1964, Social Trends and World Bank Data. Clearly, there are also countless hardcopy sources available if these do not tempt your appetite, and indeed constructing a database from a number of books, journal articles and primary sources would provide richer possibilities for your dissertation in the summer.

You should start to think about this project as soon as you begin work on the ACCESS assignment. The completed project needs to be submitted by the end of the second week of Term 1 (i.e. final week of Teaching Block 1).

Some notes on building a compound document
In computing terms your project report will be a compound document, that it one that combines text with objects such as graphs, tables, maps and other illustrations. The construction of tables and graphs has already been covered, and guidance provided on how to incorporate them into a word document. You may find maps and other illustrations on the web which you want to incorporate in your report; if so, they will probably come as .bmp or .gif files which WORD is able to include very easily (use Insert/Picture or Insert/Object from WORD's menu when your cursor is at the point you want the insertion to take place). You are equally likely to come across such objects in a book or journal paper (probably more likely for some topics). If so, in the Computing Service terminal room you will find an A4 colour and monochrome flatbed scanners which you can use to create an image file for insertion in your project report.

Some tips on construction
As you know the only storage medium you have on a permanent basis are your floppy disks. But, very likely, your completed project report is too large to fit on a floppy disk (remember, when you open WORD it automatically makes a .bak version of the .doc file it opens, further limiting unused space on the disk), and you thus have a problem.

Solution: once you have assembled all of the resources you need for your project report (text, tables, graphs, maps etc.), copy all of them into the \temp directory of the C: or D: drives on a PC attached to the printer you want to use. Now open WORD and load the text of your project from that temp directory, inserting your graphs etc. in your document. When fully constructed, print it out. Save it, just in case it is small enough to save to a floppy disk once you have excited WORD. Now would also be a good point to ensure that your backup disk is an exact copy of your master disk. Remember, when you have completed all of this, to delete the files you placed in the \temp directory.

To IT-MA home page
To Department of Historical Studies home page.

(c)R. Middleton 1997. Last modified 30 June 1998.