Who migrate to a larger city or another country? How do marriage partners find each other? In order to research such questions over the centuries, data are collected in archives, transcribed and stored in large historical databases. All over the world there are about thirty databases with data from individual life courses, among which the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN). Working with these databases is not always easy. This inaugural lecture discusses three strategies: In the curriculum of the historical faculties working with these databases needs more emphasis, subsets which are easy to handle by historians must be made out of these datasets and more cooperation is needed between scientists each with their own specializations. The basis for this cooperation must be laid by a common Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) which is introduced here for the first time in the Netherlands. In 2008 Kees Mandemakers was appointed professor of Large Historical Databases at the Faculty of History and Arts of the Erasmus University Rotterdam by the International Institute of Social History (IISH).

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Erasmus MC: University Medical Center Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/16263
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC)

Mandemakers, K. (2009, June 11). Waarom Jan en Cor met elkaar trouwden. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/16263