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Revision as of 03:14, 16 February 2011 by RCPalmer (talk | contribs)

WiDACT: the Wiki Data Accumulator for the Cities and Towns of England and Wales, 1200-1700

The WiDACT is a project of the Anglo-American Legal Tradition (AALT) website (http://aalt.law.uh.edu).

The WiDACT is a wiki site that shares research findings on the cities and towns of England and Wales. Researchers may post relevant links to documents organized by town and time. The contents of the document may then be summarized and/or translated and commented upon. The goals of the WiDACT are
  • furthering the history of the city and towns of England and Wales
  • enabling the exploitation of TNA documents available on the AALT (and, tangentially, elsewhere)
  • expanding the research community by providing a research purpose short of full-fledged publication
  • lowering the cost of research by expanding online research capability
  • providing a collaborative model of research
ADDING A TOWN The main grid is security protected, because it is hard to construct. More towns will be added on request to rpalmer@uh.edu. The original set of cities/towns in the main grid is not meant as a limitation but only as a starting point.
Links to City/Town Pages
Categories: the WiDACT has a main grid organized first by town/city, with subsequent columns for different categories.
  • Officials: a listing of various city/town officials; column headers must be adjusted to reflect the city/town organization. These pages are organized in relatively long chronological segments.
  • Documents: a catch-all category for documents not covered by other columns. This column will take most documents come upon casually and not by purposive site development.
  • Local Court Records: The main subject matter of this column is records of local courts that appear in the central courts by removal or by appellate procedures. The primary organization is thus one long page organized chronologically. If users choose to transcribe local court records of other kinds, the main page should only have a brief mention (as with the appellate procedures) with the transcript relegated to another page leading from the main.
  • Exchequer Accounts: The accounts for cities/towns appear mainly in the pipe rolls. For cities/towns that became counties, the account is one of the primary divisions of the pipe roll and can be found via the ToC page in the AALT. Before becoming a county, however, the city/town will often have annual enrollments in the account of the ancient county. Resolution of accounts in the memoranda rolls (E159, E368) and various other exchequer accounting documents can appropriately also be put in this column.
  • Data Tables: People who want to put up data tables can do in this category. Such data tables may be lists of things or of inhabitants, or analyses of multi-year phenomena. Make your table in a spreadsheet; convert to HTML; copy and paste into a separate page linked to the page leading from the main grid.
  • Charters: The link here leads to a single page with a chronological listing of links to documents relating city/town charters.
  • Researchers: The page leading from this column allows researchers to form groups of similar interest that can work on the development of a history of a city or town without duplication of effort. Such groups can also provide help for each other to develop relevant skills and pool information.





Conventions

  • link under the date of the document, not the date of the events recounting
  • copy and paste the link from the original site, otherwise you may mis-copy it
  • enter data in the series: description, link, (and, if you choose) translation link (translation link in the series Town, Year, Letter)
  • each document must have a unique name; construct the names in WiDACT order: Town + category, Year, Order (Bristol Documents 1370 B)
  • dates are constructed in ascending order: day, month, year (29.12.97 (when the century is otherwise clear) or 29.12.1397)


Links to City/Town Pages

For examples, see Bristol under the late 1370s after clicking on link above

templates

Tasks 1. Logo and aesthetics of main page 2. Security protocols 3. Collaborators 4. Reconstruction of sidebar



Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.

Getting started