Technical and methodological foundations of digital indexing of medieval and early modern court books

Abstract

AbstractEver since the beginnings of the modern historiography, the court books have posed a challenge for editors in Poland, both due to their number and variety. They constitute one of the richest sources enabling a variety of historical research. The publication of the sources’ content can be shared owing to new approaches stemming from constant development of IT tools and their application in the humanities. The solution proposed in our article is a digital indexing based on a relational database enabling access to the sources’ scans. The characterization of the method is preceded by a description of the theoretical foundations of the presented method. The assumed principals are implemented by the use of a dedicated to this project online INDXR application which functionalities is thoroughly described. Using the INDXR application, the data acquired from the sources are collected and stored in the database which structure is also illustrated along with its theoretical foundations. The database is established in order to better reflect the typical elements comprising the court books as well as to store the acquired information. The issues stemming from the process of indexing the court books, such as categorizing of the entries, their spatial context, and the problem of how to describe the persons appearing in the manuscript are also presented.