Automation on Parnassus: CLIO - A Databank Oriented System for Historians [1980]

Abstract

To support several ongoing research projects the development of a general purpose system was started in 1978 at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen. This paper describes the second version of that system. Controlled by a simple scripting language, its most important features are: (a) a flexible input system combining free field and tag/content representation of data that can be structured in very complex hierarchies, (b) a retrieval system, (c) a system for the interactive coding of historical sources. (d) Various ways of entering codebook like "thesauri" provide a cheap way to recode as often as necessary material of doubtful semantics. (e) A system for nominative record linkage is provided which supports name comparisons by two classes of algorithms. Base algorithms can be adapted to suit the dialects of a particular area by a simple set of algorithm defining directives.