About the Project: Making Connections: Linked Databases

    One of the great strengths of hypertext is that it allows “links” between different types of data.  “Other Souths” attempts to take advantage of the hypertextuality of the internet by making connections between different kinds of data.  When one finds a record for “Thomas Ruffin, Jr.,” for example, in the Confederate Service Records, clicking on the “Details Star” then links the user to all of the other kinds of information that are available about Thomas Ruffin, Jr.—to his entry in the slaveholder census, his service record from the war, and to his entry in the 1860 population census.  In this way, it is possible to gather a more complete picture of a person than it is from one data type alone, and the information from one type of source enriches the information in another.  Detail screens accessible through every data type keep this feature at the forefront of the user’s experience.  Each detail screen populates with the appropriate record.  Blank forms indicate either that there is no record in that source for that individual OR that it is impossible to make the link with confidence based on the available information.

    The difficulty of this approach, of course, is that it is necessary to connect the databases manually—to identify for the computer which entry in one source corresponds to an entry in another.  This is a daunting process, to say the least.  As a result of typographical or factual errors in the sources themselves, looser nineteenth century spelling conventions, and incomplete records, sometimes even the most careful research does not produce a match.  Worse, it sometimes produces a wrong match.  In order to mitigate the possible harm caused by incorrect matches, the detail screens populate with some of the information used to generate the matches.  Users will therefore be able to accept or reject the match for themselves, preventing the most serious problems of interpretation.