Technical Solutions for Data Systematization for Early Modern Accounting Sources. The HOLYLAB Database of Account Books of the Custody of the Holy Land

Abstract

This article discusses the early stages of the online, open-access database of the ERC project 'HOLYLAB'. Specifically, it addresses the work done on the database sources—the account books from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—and the technical solutions adopted for the purpose of data systematization. Considering such solutions in depth is crucial, we believe, for several reasons. First, these solutions make unravelling the complexity and lack of structure for this type of historical data, which are both quantitative and qualitative and greatly inconsistent, possible. They also constitute a key initial step in the analysis and design stages of a database that aims to serve different functions simultaneously: granting access to unpublished historical records, as well as allowing searches for specific objects, people, places and for changes in the circulation of money, objects, and people through space and time. Finally, doing so provides a blueprint for approaching and systematizing historical data in early modern accounting sources in a crucially flexible way, and will help other researchers who face similarly challenging and complex data when building historical databases.

Keywords

• databases
• data systemization
• analysis and design stages
• early modern history
• accounting history
• mobility history