Rigsarkivet Digital History Methods Lab at UCPH

Spring 2018 Programme

21 February, 13.00-16.00 OpenRefine to make sense of historical transcribed records: studying the inhabitants of Copenhagen through the 1885 census

Collaboration with HUMLab.Instructors: Muhamed Fajkovic, Lars Kjær and Barbara Revuelta-Eugercios. Location: HUMLab, KUB Søndre Campus, Karen Blixens Plads 7, 2300 København S

Are you interested in taking advantage of the millions of records of historical information already available for historical research? Are you unsure about how to get started in dealing with them and making sense of the variety of ways people describe their lives? This 3-hour workshop will introduce you to how you can use Open Refine to make sense, clean and analyze, freely available transcribed sources available at the Danish Demographic Database to do historical research. In it, we will use Open Refine to study the inhabitants of Copenhagen according to the census of 1885 and you will learn how to deal a large amount of information on people on historically meaningful information.

Introduction to data historical and contemporary data for Humanists at Rigsarkivet contained at the Danish Demographic Database

Introduction to the use of Open Refine for cleaning and managing historical data

An exercise to clean and visualize data to solve a research question using the fully transcribed census of Copenhagen in 1885

1 March, 13.00-16.00 Using Microsoft Excel to analyze freely available historical datatabases: life in Copenhagen through the 1885 census

Collaboration with HUMLab.Instructors: Barbara Revuelta-Eugercios, Muhamed Fajkovic and Lars Kjær. Location: HUMLab, KUB Søndre Campus, Karen Blixens Plads 7, 2300 København S

Are you interested in taking advantage of the millions of records of historical information already available for historical research? Are you interested in developing a digital profile? Do you want to be able to analyze small databases with Excel for historical research? This 3-hour workshop will introduce you to how you can use one of the freely available transcribed sources available at the Danish Demographic Database to do historical research. In it, we will use Excel to answer a research question using the Copenhagen census of 1885 and you will learn how to turn a large amount of information on people on historically meaningful information.Taking a research question as a starting point, this workshop will provide an:

Introduction to data historical and contemporary data for Humanists at Rigsarkivet contained at the Danish Demographic Database

Introduction to the use of Excel for data management and historical analysis (through pivot tables).

An exercise to solve a research question using the fully transcribed census of Copenhagen in 1885 and getting historical (and humanistic) inference out of quantitative data.

Requirements: there are no pre-requirements for the course but we recommend that students take the time to at least open Microsoft Excel briefly and, if they can, watch some of these our videos to make the best of the workshop. Bring your own computer with Microsoft Excel installed for Mac/Windows or download OpenOffice

12 March, 13.00-16.00. Using Stata 13 to manage and analyze available historical databases: life in Copenhagen through the 1885 census

Instructor:Barbara Revuelta-Eugercios. Location: 12-4-07, KUB Søndre Campus, Karen Blixens Plads 7, 2300 København S

Are you interested in taking advantage of the possibilities of the millions of records of historical information already available? Are you interested in developing a digital profile? Have you found the limits of Excel for data analysis and you want something better? This 3-hour workshop will introduce you to the basics to be able to process and analyze data produced by others to answer a research question, such as transcribed historical data, like the one that you can get for free at the Danish Demographic Database, or surveys and other publically available data at Danish Data Archive. Taking a research question as a starting point, this workshop will provide an:

Introduction to data historical and contemporary data for Humanists at Rigsarkivet: Danish Demographic Database and survey data at the Digital Service

Introduction to basic data management and analysis in Stata: managing data, creating variables, writing your own scripts and doing some basic analyses

An exercise to solve a research question using the fully transcribed census of Copenhagen in 1885 and getting historical inference out of quantitative data

Requirements: there are no pre-requirements for the course but we encourage students to attend to the Excel seminar as a preparation to the basics of data analysis (or watch videos). The workshop assumes no prior experience with the program. Bring your own computer and we will provide you indications on how to get access to the software.

Register:Write with your name, degree and course to bre@sa.dk

3rd April, 13.00-1500. Make your own qualitative or quantitative database to study available historical sources: software and best practices with examples with Rigsarkivet collections

Instructor:Barbara Revuelta-Eugercios. Location: 12-4-07, KUB Søndre Campus, Karen Blixens Plads 7, 2300 København S

Do you plan to analyze more than a couple dozen examples of a given type source and study some characteristics (case files, personal records, letters, newspaper articles)? Or are you thinking about finding information about the same people in several sources? This 2-hour workshop will show you how building a small database, using very accessible tools as Microsoft Excel or Access, will let you get the most of the data you collect and expand the possibilities of your analyses. The workshop will consist on:

An introduction to why we need to create database for making good rigorous research

Two examples on how to create a small database from online records about individuals (lægdrulle) and a qualitative database, capturing information of newspaper articles

An exercise on building your own database to answer a research question

Requirements: there are no pre-requirements for the course but we encourage students to attend to the Excel seminar as a preparation to the basics of data analysis (or watch our videos). The workshop assumes no prior experience with any program.

Register:Write with your name, degree and course to bre@sa.dk