The database is an essential part of the DEMALPS project. The team members conceived it with two objectives in mind: the need for a tool suitable for collecting, analysing, and exchanging research data, and a channel for allowing other researchers and the public to explore and use the data. Below we provide a high-level tour of the data and the interfaces for consulting it
The information contained in the database is organised around three fundamental entities, each corresponding to a section in the menu at the top of this page:
More descriptive information about these three different dimensions can be accessed two ways: either in the menu on the left which contains all database documentation, or by clicking the information icon (a cpaital "I") on any given page.
Archives, Communities, and Records are the three pricipal ways to navigate the database, but they are all interconnected and cover the same project territory. There are however two layers to the intersection of communities and archives: the census and the records.
The maps and lists of archives and communities found in this database present the ongoing reuslts of extensive archival surveys conducted by the DEMALPS team and the associated research project “Writing communities”. This survey is carried out as follows:
In 1995, the countries that signed the Alpine Convention agreed on a shared definition of the borders of the Alpine region. The DEMALPS project uses this definition to identify communities and archives of potential research interest in the western Alps (and part of the central Alps).
The team's initial work was to document the archival inventories and other archival description tools, searching for the holdings of communities located within the territory of the Convention (even if the holdings themselves have been moved elsewhere). All the information collected from the inventories is entered into the database, both relevant sources from the medieval period and relevant or even potentially useful material from later periods.
Many inventories are available online or in publications, resulting in a very large database of all the communities covered by the Alpine Convention, that is, thousands of communities. But not all inventories have been validated by onsite visits at the individual archives. The team members focused on archives that hold medieval documentation. Whether and when the status of the documentation has been verified on-site is indicated in the holding description tabs of each archive.
It is worth noting that the tools at hand for the archive survey and the criteria for selecting communities of interest have important regional variations:
The records are the extracts of documents we have inspected at archives (based on the census) and selected for more detailed study. but not very record is equally elaborated. Entering records into the database is a time-consuming task, and the Alpine archives are often very rich. For this reason, not every record is elaborated in total detail – some feature only metadata, others detailed description of content and photos. Not every document identified in the census in a given archive's holdings has be indexed in the records.
The collections of records are the result of the individual work of DEMALPS team members and external collaborators. Through the database, everyone can publish the records they have filed according to their own lines of research, attaching photographic reproductions of the related sources. This will allow the research data to be reused (and criticized), hopefully amplifying the impact of the DEMALPS project.
There are several methods for navigating through the data, exploiting the potential of digital tools to explore them.