Building a Digital Prosopography

Towards a Scholarly / Technical Partnership

Abstract

The paper explores how digital resources can be successfully built for historical projects. It
focuses on projects that use highly structured data as the paradigm for representation, and it explores
the basis for a collaboration between technically-oriented partners who understand and can work
within the formalisms of highly structured digital data and historians who must ensure that the formal
structures that emerge properly represent the historical issues. The author has experience with over
20 such projects and believes that a rich, understanding of the model for the structured data that is
shared between technical staff and historians is the key component in achieving success. Through
looking at examples from these projects the paper shows how this shared understanding can positively
affect several aspects of the project work and the resulting digital resource.