I had to do a bit of supplementary research on databases this week. I wondered what made databases more important, or even what distinguished them, from archives. Using http://www.archivists.org/archivesmonth/whatisanarchives.pdf, I deduced that an archive contains real sources of information, where a database shows you where you may go to find the information you may require. Of course, data bases are indispensable resources of history. According to http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit04/primer04_01.phtml a database can be anything from a phone book to US Census Data. They can even be sources of inspiration: in “The World According to Garb” by John Irving, Garp, a writer, gets inspiration for his next book by looking through the White Pages in the phone book. I feel that the Slave Voyages Database might be important in the same way: it is impactful to see the sheer number of names and cases, and even the countries of origin compared to the ports where they disembarked, but the database does not give us the humanizing aspect: the faces behind the names that tell a story. The same goes for the example in the XTF database article, which gives the names of books, authors, publishing cities, but does not necessarily illuminate the reader to what the book may be about.
A database is the bones of a story, a bare outline that must be fleshed out. The Quantifying Kissinger blog is much more effective in telling the story of Kissinger’s years in government, using audio recordings and “meeting memorabilia” to show not only the dates of the meetings but to tell a tale of a man’s personality in government. On the contrary to the databases mentioned above, this Kissinger database logs real information, instead of simply being a list of titles.
This also makes me think of the US Census Data, which collects information about people like names, race, income, etc. This data is used to “to determine the distribution of Congressional seats to states, to define legislature districts, school district assignment areas and other important functional areas of government, make decisions about what community services to provide” etc ( according to http://www.census.gov/aboutus/). This is another example of a data base being used as a baseline to decide what to do, the actual Census data must be interpreted and expanded upon to achieve the goals of the Census (name and exonomic standing alone will not do much, it is much more meaningful when as many aspects of people’s lives as possible are outlined). Or, going back to my original example, a database can mean more when the reader is able to fill in those cracks for themselves.