Integrative, Interdisciplinary Database Design for the Spatial Humanities: the Case of the Holocaust Ghettos Project

Abstract

Databases are central to the digital, spatial, and geohumanities. There is surprisingly little scholarly literature, however, on the process of database construction in humanities projects. This article describes a process of interdisciplinary database design that emerged in the course of building the core sections of an historical GIS of Holocaust ghettos. The process foregrounds collaborative design, testing that purposely flushes out paradigmatic differences and ontological problems, and revision to incorporate group decisions and agreed-upon meanings into data structures, field definitions, and instructions for data entry. The result is a deeply integrative form of mixed methodology that incorporates ethical standards along with data entry instructions and team training.