An Introduction to Timelink

Timelink is computer tool specially developed to support micro-historical research with a strong emphasis on network analysis and prosopography.

Timelink provides a data models and procedures to go from historical sources to network analysis and convers transcription of sources, record linking, reconstitution of biographies and network inference.

Timelink is unique in that it bridges a source-oriented approach with a person-oriented approach.

This document provides a quick overview of Timelink.

Summary

• An Introduction to Timelink

  • The Problem

  • Aims

  • Timelink approach

  • The Source Oriented Model

  • Example of the Kleio notation

  • The Person Oriented Model

The Problem

Reconstruct individual biographies from diverse sources, mainly for network analysis.

• Few apriori choices on who is relevant.

• Focus is on network analysis: relations between people are as important as individual attributes.

• Great diversity of sources (anything with personal information can be used).

• Linking references to the same persons in different sources is essential (record linking).

Aims

Data input close to the original source

• Information about persons should keep the original context.

• Original source structure and sequence of information should be preserved.

• Postpone decisions implying loss of information.

Late and reversible record linking

• Decision on who is who should be made when all available information is available.

• Record linking should be reversible.

Flexible interface for complex information

Find ways to show the complex information of biographies and networks in a comprehensible way.

Timelink approach

• Double approach:

  • A text-based source-oriented data model is used to transcribe sources with little loss of information.

  • A person-oriented model, that consolidates biographical data, handles inference of networks and reversible record linking

• The Kleio notation (Manfred Thaller) is used for source-oriented data input.

• A relation database structure is used to store person-oriented data together with original source context

• A special software, “the translator” processes text transcriptions of the sources and populates the person-oriented database .

• This solves the inevitable tension between a source-oriented model

  and an analytical model.

The Source Oriented Model

Uses a containment structure of source->act->persons and objects

• A historical source contains one or more acts.

• Acts are records of events described in the sources.

• Acts contain actors (persons) and objects (things, properties, institutions)

• Persons and objects appear in acts with specific functions (father in a baptism, owner in a sale contract, land object of a sale in a contract).

• Actors and objects are described by attributes (name, age, gender, price, area).

• Actors and objects are linked by relations. Relations are described by a type (kin, economical, professional), and a value (brother, lender, apprentice).

• Every act, function, attribute and relation has a date and a link to the point in the original source where it appeared.

Example of the Kleio notation

A baptism:

baptism$17/9/1685/parish church
n$manuel/m
    father$jose luis
        atr$residence/casal da corujeira
    mother$domingas jorge
    gfather$francisco rodrigues/id=b1685.9.17.gf
        atr$residence/moinhos do paleao
    gmother$maria pereira
        rel$kin/wife/francisco rodrigues/b1685.9.17.gf

The Person Oriented Model

The Person Oriented Model represents a biography through 3 domains:

• Functions (the roles of the person in acts)

• Attributes

• Relations

The Person Oriented Model is an alternative view on the information recorded in the sources, in a way that facilitates estatistical analysis, network analysis and prosopographhy.

The previous baptism generates information as follows (italics show information inferred by Timelink).

Entities

Id	Class	Inside
bapt1685-1700	source	—
b1	act	bapt1685-1700
b1-per1	person	b1
b1685.9.17.gf	person	b1
b1-per2	person	b1
b1-per3	person	b1

Persons

Id	Nome	Gender
b1-per1	manuel	f
b1-per2	jose luis	m
b1-per3	domingas jorge	f
b1985.9.17.gf	francisco rodrigues	m
b1.per5	maria pereira	f

Attributes

Entity	Type	Value	Date
b1-per1i	residence	Casal da Corujeira	17/9/1685
b1985.9.17.gf	residence	Moinhos do Paleao	17/9/1685

Relations

Origin	Destination	Type	Value	Date
b1-per2	b1.per3	kin	husband	17/9/1685
b1-per5	b1985.9.17.gf	kin	wife	17/9/1685
b1-per2	b1-per1	kin	father	17/9/1685