The AHDS has produced a number of case studies concerning good practice within the Digital Humanities. Here is one on database design (link). It is in relation to the Religion, dynasty and Patronage project c. 440-840. The database is available online (buggered if I could get it to work though), and you can also download the files from the AHDS repository and assemble the computer files and study the associated documentation yourself.
The experience of the Patronage team in developing several models for their database is not unusual. Experimentation is essential, and this will inevitably include some wrong turns in trying to develop a workable design. An iterative process of design and testing, with samples of real data, can iron out many problems before the main data entry begins. This will save much time and wasted effort, and apart from identifying technical issues, it may also highlight further research questions worth investigating. Now this part of the project is accomplished, the Patronage team have begun their close reading of the sources from which they are extracting the material relevant to their historical questions. Once complete, the team hope to see their resource accepted as a valuable resource within their intellectual community. The project team does not presume that their creation will give definitive answers on questions of patronage in the Early Christian era. Rather, the database is helpful as a research tool in two instances. Firstly, as mentioned, it points users, in a matter of seconds, to particular references in the primary sources. Secondly, the database allows users to discover patterns in the social make-up of the era, whether over a very broad sweep of time, or focused on one particular location. Using these clues, historians will be able to construct new hypotheses about early medieval Rome and then consult, in greater detail, the manuscripts and other sources themselves. From there they will be able to either confirm or reject these new ideas. Good design – entailing a model that does not impose restrictions on data entry by being too specific, but rather allows the primary material to shape its contours – is the key to achieving a database that can do this, and thus providing a digital resource that stimulates new questions for the historian to examine and answer.
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