Historical IT
The Past in computer science and documentation deals with formal procedures in the field of historical sciences. On the one hand, it supports the entire research process, from the documentation of the sources and / or phenomena through their analysis to the presentation of the objects of documentation or the results of analyzes. On the other hand, due to its basic and integrative scientific field of activity in theory, method and application, it has an impact on the (“historical”) individual disciplines.
Due to its social relevance, for example in the area of knowledge transfer, it is also responsible for the image of the historical sciences in the public. The most important tools are computer systems - their use requires the development of appropriate software, design and implementation of complex information and analysis systems. Through special research processes and working techniques, a new quality of historical or basic scientific research can be achieved.
One of the pioneers in this field is the Tübingen Egyptologist Wolfgang Schenkel , who as early as 1965 carried out "investigations into late Egyptian grammar" and later a "concordance of Egyptian coffin texts" with the help of IT . Currently in the will Egyptology the "Egyptian Dictionary" as a web-based virtual dictionary implemented with relational databases and XML - Document Type Definition (DTD) to be used.
While in Scandinavia and in the Anglo-Saxon area historical IT is a natural part of intellectual informatics (mostly referred to there as humanities computing ), in the German-speaking area it only emerged with the activities of the Graz Research Institute for Basic Historical Sciences (in particular Ingo H. Kropac) and Manfred Thallers (now the Institute for Historical and Cultural Information Processing at the University of Cologne ).
literature
- Guido Koller: History digital. Re-measuring historical worlds . Kohlhammer, 2016 ISBN 978-3-17-028929-1