This week on my project at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, I focused on exploring the data and planning for what I want to accomplish by the end of this fellowship. While exploring the data, as well as the project files from last year’s fellow, a few very important issues became apparent.
- Address data needs to be addressed using resources available to deal with old street names, as well as standardization of address formats
- School data needs to be adjusted for duplication and re-naming
- Occupation data needs to be considered. Can the non-standard occupations be mapped to controlled vocabularies? If not, how can this information be utilized.
These three main issues appear to be the best focus for my time during the next two weeks. To keep my mind active during this process, I’ll try to collect unusual examples, which I’ll share here.
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Alyson Gamble
Doctoral Student, Simmons University
It sounds like the theme across these through three issues is standardization! Is the data collection small enough to where you can do this mapping (e.g., number 3) manually?
You’re right about that, and yes! The data for #2-3 appears to be at a scale that can be handled manually.
I can see where it would be hard to standardize addresses, institutions, and jobs when they have changed over time. And not just the names, but the actual entities. What comes to mind is how my grandparents used to live 7 miles north of town before addresses were used.