Q. Name of project
De kwantitatieve databank van Belgische gemeenten (19-20ste eeuw)
Q. Name of project IN ENGLISH
The quantitative database of Belgian municipalities (19th-20th century)
Q. Principal researcher(s)
Eric Vanhaute, Sven Vrielinck, Martina (Tine) De Moor
Q. Who can/should be contacted now, and how?
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Name: |
M. De Moor |
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Postal Address: |
Department of History, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium |
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E-mail Address: |
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Web site: |
New site under construction; Preliminary site: see: |
Q. When did research begin?
A pilot projet on the area of Ghent started in 1990 as a try-out of would be done in the larger project later on.
Q. Is the project still in existence? If it has ended, when did it end? If it still exists, when is it expected to end?
The project was officially ended in 1997. It is however- partly –still in existence. In 1997 the actual research and funding was finished but ever since one of the researchers (S. Vrielinck) has been working on an extensive repertory on an administrative-geographic and statistical repertory of the municipalities and supra-communal units within the borders of present day Belgium. Right now, we are looking for further funding to support a new project wherein 1) the existing database will be made more user-friendly and accessible and 2) add more statistics.
Q. What institution(s) was the project based in?
The project was based at Ghent University, at the department for contemporary history.
Q. How many people were/are employed, and for how long? Were these people recruited specially for the project, or were they already employed by the institution(s)?
In total 5 people have been employed on and especially for the proect. They were mostly not employed on a full-time basis. In total about 8 full-time equivalents have been working on the project.
Q. How much did the project cost?
Total funding obtained for personnel costs was 16 million Belgian Francs of 0,4 million Euro. This does not include infrastructure costs (computers, software, …). These were however not so substantial compared to wages.
Q. Who paid for the project?
The most important contributing institutions were:
Q. If the project is still underway, has all necessary funding to complete the project been raised?
No. Since we have decided to continue with the database in order to valorise the data and add more new data, we are currently looking for new funding.
Q. How easy has it been to raise the money?
It has been very difficult to obtain the required funding. Many applications for all sort of national and international funding have been made, whereof very few were accepted. There was very little interest in a project such as ours.
Q. Other than raising the money, what are the biggest problems your project has faced?
Q. How likely is it that further funding might be raised within your country for a collaborative European project?
It would be very difficult. Hardly any money can be raised for a national project.
Q. What geographical area is covered by the project? What is the MODERN legal status of this area? (i.e. is it a nation state, a province of a nation state, etc). If the area currently lacks a legal definition, when was it defined and by whom?
The nation state Belgium, as founded in 1830.
Q. Does the project aim to: (a) Reconstruct boundaries at a single date; (b) Reconstruct boundaries at a series of dates; (c) Construct a continuous record of changing boundaries over a period?
We aim at constructing a continuous record of changing boundaries over a long period of time.
Q. What is the earliest date covered by the project?
The maps go back to 1800; the statistics to 1796, tough data are discontinuous until 1801.
Q. What is the latest date covered by the project?
1961 for the maps and 1970 for the statistics.
Q. What systems of units are included?
The system covers for the whole period:
Q. What is the project's final product?
3. An administrative-geographic and statistical repertory of the municipalities and supra-communal units within the borders of present day Belgium.
Q. What other publications has your project produced? In particular, please give details of any publications on methodology, and any publications in other languages?
J. De Belder, E. Vanhaute and S. Vrielinck, "Naar een kwantitatieve Databank van de Belgische Gemeenten, 19de en 20ste eeuw. Verslag van een proefproject, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor de Nieuwste Geschiedenis, 1992, 3-4, 355-414.
E. Vanhaute, "Eigendomsverhoudingen in de Belgische en Vlaamse landbouw tijdens de 18de en 19de eeuw", Belgisch Tijdschrift voor de Nieuwste Geschiedenis, 1993, 1-2, 185-226
E. Vanhaute, "The quantitative database of Belgian Municipalities (19th and 20th centuries): from diachronic worksheets to historical maps", in: M. Goerke (e.d.), Coordinates for Historical Mpas. A workshop of the Association for History and Computing, European University Institute 13/14 may, Göttingen, Max-Planck-institut für Geschichte, 1994, 162-175.
E. Vanhaute, "De meest moordende van alle industrieën. De huisnijverheid in België omstreeks 1900", in: Tijdschrift voor Social Geschiedenis, 1994, 4, 461-483.
E. Vanhaute and S. Vrielinck, "Belgian Towns in demographic censuses, 19th-20th centuries. A bibliographic guide", in: W. Prevenier and P. Stabel (e.d.), Bibliographies on European Urban History. Belgium-Ireland-Spain, Gent, 1996.
Q. What base map is/was used to record the information? When was it created, and by whom? Is it published or in an archive?
We started mapping from a digital map of 1977, based on vectored co-ordinates. We used the Lambert co-ordinates to adjust the boundaries thereafter. This base-map was bought from a commercial company, Teleatlas in 1990.
Q. What scale was this base map on?
--
Q. If your project constructed a record of boundary CHANGES, what sources of information were used? How was this information gathered?
Boundary information was found in:
1808-1834:descriptions (in word) are available; From 1831 onwards lists were made of the boundary changes on the basis of the legal records and added to the censuses.
Legal sources describing the boundary changes can be found in the collections of laws.
Specialised literature (e.g. gazetteers) (see elsewhere: Odiette, Vandermaelen,…)
Research was done in archives in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
Q. What other maps besides the base map were used? When were they created, and by whom? What scale were they on? What boundaries did they show? How reliable are they?
Historical analogue maps on the level of the municipalities. We adjusted the initial base map on the basis of these analogue maps. Their reliability varies a lot.
Q. Please give full publication details (author(s), title, place of publication, date of publication).
Q. What software was used?
During the project we used Plan Perfect, Quattro Pro, Lotus, SPSS, Atlas Mapmaker, Atlas Draw and Atlas Graphics. The data will be converted to Arcview in the near future in order to make them more easily accessible and exchangeable.
Q. If your GIS was specially written for you, or heavily tailored for your project, who was responsible for programming? How can they be contacted?
There were no major changes made to the conventional structure of the software.
Q. What were your reasons for your choice of software? If you started again now, would you use the same software
The reasons for choosing this software were:
We would not use several software packages to form a system anymore. We'd rather use a complete G.I.S. Package right now, one that can be used by historians who do haven't had a serious G.I.S. training yet. The package Mapmaker has however proven to be -however simply it might be- very effective to make nice and clear maps on a short time. Students have been working with the package as well since it is relatively simple to use.
Q. Describe the data files making up the final system: Are they a standard GIS file format? If not, where can detailed documentation be found?
The files need conversion from a .bna-format to .shp-files. We're currently working on this.
Q. What map projection is used?
Lambert projection
Q. Assess the overall accuracy of your digital mapping.
In general the digital mapping was done very accurate (this means: on average the error margin was no larger than 1 m, except for the areas which have been seriously reshaped). The error margin is however always much smaller than 1 km.
Q. If the end-product is neither a traditional publication or a GIS, please describe it?
Q. Whatever the resource your project has actually created, and in the light of your experience with the project, what form of output SHOULD a new project have?
CD-ROM that allows other researchers to add their own data.
Q. What place-names are built-in to your mapping? Is each point/area (node/polygon) labelled with a single name, or is there some system for linking to different versions of names?
The old names for the period 1800 till 1975; each period has a name or several names depending on the fact whether it has changed names or not. The identification of an area is however done by means of a cartographic code. So each unit has had a code and an official name and an overview of the old names.
Q. Does the history/linguistic geography of your area raise special problems with naming places?
Many communities, especially nearby the language border, have Flemish and French names. Those in German speaking Belgium have French and German names.
Q. Have you any plans to make the place-name information gathered by your project available in any other form?
An administrative-geographic and statistical repertory of the municipalities and supra-communal units within the borders of present day Belgium is in print. This gives all kinds of place-name information for the 19th and 20th century for all municipalities of Belgium
Q. What sources have you used to research place- and area-names for use in your system?
This information was available in the censuses, archives and in a few published gazetteers.
Q. Are there any quite separate projects concerned with the history of place names or of administrative hierarchies in your area? If so, please give details? Are they using computers? Are they aiming to make their results available on-line?
No.
Q. Was the GIS/digital resource constructed for use by its creators ONLY, or was it intended for wider use?
Wider use.
Q. Are you willing to make it available for use by others?
Yes.
Q. Are you willing to make it available for free, or for distribution costs only? If not, what plans have you for commercial distribution?
We want to make it available at the cost of distribution and production. This will probably not be done via a commercial company but in co-operation with one or another governmental institution.
Q. Is the resource available NOW? If so, how and from where?
No, only via the researchers.
Q. Are there any limitations on access?
Yes. (practical and intellectual limitations).
Q. What file format or file formats is the resource available in?
.map-files (in Mapmaker) and Excel-files.
Q. If the resource is available from the researcher/project that created it, what plans are there for distribution after the project ends/the researcher retires?
We are still working on that.
Q. What plans are there for updating the data files for use with more recent versions of software?
The formation of a G.I.S. will be taken care of.
Q. What plans are there for updating the data files to include the results of more recent historical research?
We aim at integrating more data in the future. The structure of the system available on CD-ROM will have o allow other researchers to add their own data.
Q. Do you own all intellectual property rights in the resource created by your project? If not, what other rights exist, and who do they belong to? What limitations have they imposed?
The base-map was bought from Teleatlas, which still have the initial property right on that map.
Q. How have Intellectual Property Rights issues limited your project?
So far we have not encountered many of those problems. Intellectual property rights will however become a problem when we starting with the actual distribution of our data on CD-ROM and via the internet.
© Martina De Moor (Gent, May 2000)