NamesDocumentation

Note: This page includes documentation, instructions, and other information about workflow for the NEH names grant. For specific tasks and tracking charts, go to the Tasks and Tracking page.

Working with the FileMaker Names Database

At present, we are storing all of our name information (authors, publishers, printers, names from content, WWP staff, etc.) in a FileMaker database called "WWP_Names" that is hosted on the stgserver. This may (pending further discussion) change in the future once we have an XML personography built from the data currently stored in FileMaker. For now, however, changes to all name information should take place in FileMaker; these changes will be exported to the separate XML personography on a regular basis.

Opening the FileMaker database

1. Launch FileMaker Pro on your local computer; it should be installed on all of the computers in the encoding room.
2. When you see the "Open New or Existing File" dialog appear, click the button that says "Remote." A new "Open Remote File" dialog will appear. From the Hosts list, choose "stgserver" (it should be the only host in the list), then select "WWP_Names" from the list that appears in the right column, and click the "Open" button.

A few general notes about FileMaker

As an application, FileMaker can be somewhat daunting to use --- not because it is a complicated program, but because changes made to the information contained in a given database are usually final. Once a record has been modified, it is generally not possible to retrieve any of the information it contained prior to that change. For this reason, it is important to be very careful in making any changes, and to make sure that you are in the proper layout or mode whenever you enter text into a record field.

For daily use, FileMaker has two basic modes: Browse mode and Find mode.

Browse mode is the default mode when you launch FileMaker. When you are in Browse mode, you will see the word "Browse" in the upper left corner of the FileMaker window, and the small pencil icon will be highlighted in blue. In Browse mode, any text you enter in a field will be recorded. This means that if you change the text in a field, even accidentally, that change will be made permanently (until you type something else in the field, that is!). You can switch to Browse mode either by clicking the pencil icon in the upper left corner of the window, or by using the keyboard combination Command-B.

Find mode is the mode used for performing any kind of search within the database. When you are in Find mode, you will see the word "Find" in the upper left corner of the window, and the small magnifying glass icon will be highlighted in blue. In Find mode, text you enter into any field will NOT be recorded; in other words, entering a term to search for will NOT modify the field where you entered the text. To enter Find mode, select the magnifying glass icon or enter the keyboard combination Command-F.

Showing all records: After performing a search, you will notice that FileMaker will only display the records that match the search terms. If you want to view a different set of records, you'll have to perform a new search. If you want to view all the records in the database, though, as if the search never happened, you can quickly do so by entering Command-J or by selecting "Show all records" from the Records menu.

Sorting the results of a search: Sometimes you will find that you need to change the order in which you see the results of a search you have performed. You can do so by entering Command-S or by selecting "Sort Records..." from the Records menu. You will be presented with a dialog box that allows you to select any criteria you might want for sorting the records in either ascending or descending order; you may select as many criteria as you need (e.g., you can first sort in ascending order by last name, then in descending order by date of birth, and then in descending order by place of death --- if doing so made sense for your particular task).

Layouts

Overview layout

When you first open it, the WWP_Names database will present you with a basic launch screen that provides buttons for common database tasks like finding various kinds of flagger records, searching for specific records, or adding new records. This is the "Overview" screen. You can return to it at any point by selecting "Overview" from the Layout pull-down menu on the left side of the FileMaker window. Many of the layouts in the Names database also include an "Overview" button at the bottom of the screen to take you back to the starting point quickly.

Input layout

The layout you will most often be working with when entering new information is the Input layout. You can get the the Input layout by selecting it from the Layout pull-down menu on the left side of the FileMaker window, or by clicking the "Input" button that appears at the bottom of the screen in most of the other layouts.

The Input layout is divided into four sections: Overview, Tracking, Name Details, and Personal Details.

Overview provides basic information, including the person's unique name key (generated by the name4kwelbo script), the number of the OT in relation to which the person first came to our attention, and a general taxonomy of that person's role in the OT and the WWP universe.

Tracking provides a few simple checkboxes that make it easier quickly to determine the status of a given database record.

Name Details provides a number of fields that make it possible for us to enter all available name information about a given person, including first, middle, and last names, titles, honorifics, alternative names and nicknames, epithets, birthnames, generational information, and pseudonyms. There is also a field for listing name variants.

Personal Details includes a number of fields that permit us to enter additional information about the person: sex, dates of birth and death, productive or active period, places of birth and death, as well as information about parental status, religious affiliation, marital status, and even the languages the person spoke or read. Finally, it includes separate fields for entering brief biographical notes, hypotheses about a person's identity or connection to other people in the database, and internal queries used during the process of researching all the above information.

Find layout

Selecting the Find layout will provide you with a layout that provides fields for commonly performed searches (name, name key, role, dates of birth/death, etc.) There are also two buttons that will quickly find all authors and all printers/publishers.

When using the Find layout, *make sure that you are in Find mode*. The Find layout can be somewhat misleading in that you are still in Browse mode even when you are viewing it. To actually use the Find layout to perform a search, you will need to switch to Find mode by pressing Command-F or by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the upper left of the window. If you don't do this, you may end up overwriting existing data, so take care!

Note: Before beginning a search, always make sure you are in Find mode. If you begin typing your search term(s) while still in Browse mode, you may end up overwriting data!

Researching and Entering Information for Textbase Authors

Every author whose work has been published as part of our Women Writers Online textbase should already have a record in the Names database, though the information in some may still be incomplete at this time. For textbase authors, our goal is to have complete database records, with all of the fields in the Overview and Personal Details sections filled in, and as much of the Name Details section complete as makes sense. This means that, where possible, we will have the following information for all our textbase authors (in addition to name information):

• Sex (male, female, unknown)
• Date of birth (year)
• Date of death (year)
• Date of productive activity (year or range of years)
• Place of birth (city)
• Place of death (city)
• Country of habitual residence (nation)
• Parental status (yes, no, unknown)
• Marital status (married, widowed, divorced, annulled
• Religious affiliation (catholic, orthodox, protestant, jewish, other)
• Languages spoken or read

We will not always have information for all of these fields, of course, though we'll do our best to make the information we do have as complete as possible. See the section on certainty below for details on how we indicate the status of our knowledge about a particular piece of information.

Researching and Entering Information for Textbase Printers=

At present (late August 2008), we have spotty records for textbase printers and publishers. Many of our printers and publishers have a record in the database, but there is a substantial minority missing. In many cases, we have a basic printer record (name key and partial name information), but little else. We do not anticipate being able to provide the same level of personal detail about printers that we hope to provide for textbase authors, but we would like to have the following information when possible (in addition to complete name information):

• Sex (male, female, unknown)
• Date of birth (year)
• Date of death (year)
• Date of productive activity (year or range of years)
• Place of birth (city)
• Place of death (city)
• Country of habitual residence (nation)

In addition, when we happen to encounter information about the precise location where the printer/publisher/bookseller operated his or her business, it's a good idea to record that information in a notes field. While it's unlikely we'll be able to do anything with that information at present, it makes sense to preserve it for a future time when we might be in a position to use it. In other words, while it isn't presently worthwhile actively to seek that level of detail, if you happen across it by chance, record it.

Indicating certainty and the status of our research

As we collect data about authors and printers, it will be necessary to indicate multiple levels of (un)certainty about the state of our knowledge with regard to any particular piece of information. We have developed a multi-tiered system for tracking certainty and the present status of our research.

1. If a field has no content and the "cert" checkbox is empty, this means that we have not yet performed any research for this particular piece of information.
2. If a field has no content and "cert" has been checked, some research has been performed but did not yield any information. This means that more research is needed.
3. If a field has content and "cert" has been checked, the information is suspect or uncertain for some reason and need to be verified --- either by consulting a specialist or by looking at additional sources.
4. If a field has content and "cert" is empty, this means that we believe the information contained in the field is accurate and complete; no additional research is required.

Example: Consider a record in which (a) the born field and its corresponding cert checkbox are empty; (b) the died field contains the date "c.1735" and its corresponding cert has been checked; and (c) the flourished field contains the range "1710-1728".

This would mean that (a) no research has been performed to determine the person's date of birth; (b) preliminary research indicates that the person died around 1735, but we need to verify this; and (c) we have performed research that indicates the person was active between 1710 and 1728, and we are confident in the accuracy of this information.

Obviously, there will be a small number of cases where additional explanatory details are needed; in this case, it's appropriate to enter a note describing the precise nature/cause of uncertainty in the "queries" field.

Name keys

Ever person who appears in the Names database has a unique name key. The first character of each name key is the first initial of the first name, followed by the first nine characters of the last name (or the full name, when the last name is less than 9 characters). To this, following a single period, is appended a three-character alphabetic checksum.

Name keys are generated by using the name4kwelbo program. When you run the program, you will be prompted to enter a name. Enter the last name, a comma, a space, and the first name, then press Return. The program will generate a name key that you can then enter in the key field in the FileMaker names database. Note: we only use lowercase letters for name keys; even if you capitalize the name when generating the key, make sure not to capitalize the key you enter in FileMaker.

Notes on Specific FileMaker Fields

Old name keys

For a variety of reasons, there may be multiple name keys that have been assigned to the same person over the years. For tracking purposes (and to ensure that we can find and correct all instances of a person whose name was encoded using an earlier key), we record the old name key value in a separate old_keys field.

Creating a new name key will generally be needed in cases where we learn more about a person during our research --- say, if we discover the first name for a person who previously appeared only under a single surname. In this case, the original name key should be added to the old_keys field, and the new key added to the main key field.

Additionally, for tracking purposes, a note should be made on the wiki identifying which names have new keys. This will permit us to track which names need to be corrected/updated in our encoded files. (For the time being, it is probably best to make a note of such changes on the tracking page Nora is currently using for names-in-context encoding.)

_Name, name/title

This is a calculated field, meaning its contents are determined algorithmically from information entered in the Name Details section. This field cannot be changed, except by editing the individual name components fields (e.g. forename, surname, honorific).

The name/title field provides the name of the author and the title of the work in relation to which the person was first noticed by the WWP. This information appears automatically once the OT number for the text in question has been added to the ot field.

Library of Congress Name Authority (LCNA)

This field contains the person's authorized heading supplied by the Library of Congress, if such a heading exists. The lcna field should contain the text that appears in the HEADING category of a LCNA record. LCNA records can be found by performing a search on the Library of Congress Authorities database. The text should be entered *exactly* as it appears in the LCNA heading, including abbreviations, punctuation, and spaces.

Personal roles

The WWP classifies people according to three broad domains:

• Personal: Essentially, this is the functional classification of the person, indicating whether she is one of the WWP's authors (textbase_author), a person involved in the publication or distribution of a text (imprint), a person who is mentioned or alluded to in a WWP text (textbase), someone whose name is part of a bibliographic citation, advertisement, or other reference (reference), or a person who is not associated with the text in any way but who has some connection to the WWP as an organization (non_textbase)
• Geography: Classifies the person according to broad geographic categories, based on modern definitions of continents.
• Culture: A person's cultural role, employing the following categories:
  • classical --- for people and characters who are part of the Greek/Roman "classical" period (e.g Homer, Cicero, Aphrodite, Hermes)
  • fiction --- for people whose existence is entirely fictional (e.g. characters in narrative poems or novels); note that this shouldn't be used to classify deities or scriptural characters whose existence is disputed
  • history --- any person whose historical existence can be verified, or whose existence can be reasonably hypothesized even in the absence of definitive records (e.g. John Melson, Henry II, Jane Anger, Pontius Pilate)
  • myth --- mythological figures from any Western or non-Western tradition (e.g. Hera, Thor); the line between mythological and scriptural figures is fuzzy, so overlap may be permitted
  • proverb --- any person, fictional or real, whose primary role is proverbial (e.g. Hobson in the phrase "Hobson's choice" --- the attribution of the phrase to an early modern English innkeeper is often thought to be apocryphal)
  • scripture --- any person, character, or deity who appears in scriptural contexts (e.g. Jesus, Saul of Tarsus, Krishna, Buddha)
  • scripture_OT --- any person who appears in the Old Testament of the Bible
  • scripture_NT --- any person who appears in the New Testament of the Bible

All of these categories may be treated as separate yet overlapping "facets," meaning a person can be classified according to multiple functional roles (printer and textbase author, for instance), multiple geographic domains (Europe and North America, perhaps), and multiple cultural fields (classical, history, scripture).

Name details

The individual components of a person's name are broken down into several discrete parts:

forename

The person's first name (or names); may contain as many individual names as required, separated by spaces. An initial followed by a single period character is also permitted in cases where the full name is unknown.

middlename

Contains the person's middle name (or names). Multiple middle names are allowed, separated by spaces. An initial followed by a single period is permitted in cases where the full name is unknown.

surname

The person's surname(s) or last name(s). If there are name particles associated with the surname (e.g. von, de, du, van de, la, ap, al, o) they should be included in the surname field in their normal reading order (e.g. a Beckett, du Verger)

birthname

For women whose surname at birth is different from the name(s) they later assumed as the result of marriage.

rolename

A person's official titles or roles; this is a repeating field (King of France, Holy Roman Emperor, Duke of York, Prince of Wales, Earl of Suffolk, Marchioness of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, etc.), so multiple titles are permitted.

nonbreaking_name

Used for people (typically historical, mythological, or scriptural figures) who are known by only one name. This shouldn't be confused with people for whom we only happen to know one name (say, a fictional character who is only known by her first name).

other_name

The person's additional names, nicknames, and epithets (e.g. Pitt the Younger, Alexander the Great, Jesus of Nazareth, Pepin the Short, The Bard, The Hammer, Bobby). This is a repeating field, so multiple values are permitted.

gen_name

The person's generational identifier, whether expressed in Roman numerals (III, IX, XIV) or with the use of "Junior" and "Senior"

honorific

The honorific that would be used in formal address (e.g. Lord, Lady, Sir, Mrs.).

pseudonym

The pseudonym(s) used by a writer in print or manuscript circulation. This shouldn't be confused with nicknames, which should appear in the other_name field.

name_variants

A list of all the variants, including variations in spelling, of a person's name. Only the part(s) which vary from their canonical forms should be entered here. For instance, if a person's canonical forename is Marvin but it is sometimes spelled Mervin, "Mervin" should be added to the name_variants list. The same is true for other parts of names, including the names of titles and roles, pseudonyms, etc.

Personal details

sex

Should be pretty much self-explanatory. The "u" radio button is for cases where we don't know a person's sex based on available information.

Dates (born, died, flourished)

The person's birth and death dates when known. With the exception of modern people (WWP encoders, for example), only the year should be supplied. The following abbreviations may be used in cases where dates are uncertain:

• "c." (circa) for approximate dates: c.1733
• "a." (ante) for cases where a precise date is not known but we know it was _before_ a particular year: a.1413
• "p." (post) for cases where a precise date is not known but we know it was _after_ a particular year: p.1811
• "/" may be used to separate the starting and ending points of a particular date range: 1654/1677

All dates should be expressed as four-digit years (1825, 0793, 0012, 0001).

Dates that might ordinarily be expressed using the suffix "B.C." should be represented according to international astronomical standards and preceded by the minus character ("-"). Under this system, the year before 1 A.D. is the year 0000; the year before that (what would normally be expressed as 2 B.C.) is the year -0001. Hence, the year 52 B.C. becomes -0051 and the year 701 B.C. is -0700.

Places (birth_place, death_place, residence)

Places where a person is born or dies should be indicated using town/city level information where available; if unavailable, it should be provided at the parish/county level. Countries should be indicated where possible (e.g. London, England; Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States; Lyons, France).

For places of residence, information should be supplied at the country level only. Multiple values are permitted for people who lived in more than one country during their life.

Parental status (parental_status)

Radio buttons for indicating whether a person had children. For women, this includes miscarriages, stillborn children, etc.

Marital status (marital_status)

Indicates what marital states (other than being single) a person experienced during his or her life. Multiple selections are allowed.

Religious affiliation (faith)

Indicates what religion(s) a person espoused at any point during his or her life. Multiple selections are allowed.

Languages spoken and/or read (languages)

Indicates what languages (other than English) a person could write, read, or speak. Multiple values are permitted.

Notes, hypotheses, and queries.

Notes provides a space for a brief biographical description of the person (no more than a few sentences). The description should contain accurate, verifiable information (or, in some cases, informed and widely accepted speculation --- e.g. "He is believed to have conducted an extended affair with the Duchess of York.")

Hypothesis is a space for more informal speculation about people for whom we are missing important information, perhaps even parts of names. For instance, in a record for a printer known only by the initials "E. W", this would be the appropriate place to write "Could this be Edward Wallace, the late 17C London printer and bookseller?"

Queries is a place for making internal tracking notes, asking questions about WWP procedures, indicates possible avenues for further research, commenting on disambiguation, etc.