User:MorrisGF/Sandbox

This is a sandbox area. It is a experimentation area and often contains disposable content. It's a place to practice editing.

So I've been thinking about an idea regarding record collections in a Wiki environment. Here are some thoughts behind it.

People need to know:


 * Where to find the records they need. If the records are available online, are they accessible for free or not? If they are offline, where are the original copies?
 * Records are associated to geographical boundaries and parameters in time. So they have to know historical jurisdictions and modern jurisdictions. They need a tool that connects the two.
 * This can be difficult because they do not know that records migrate from one archive to another through the years depending on funding, storage space, and politics.

So having worked in a Wiki environment for some time the thought came “why couldn’t this be created in a Wiki?” Here are some possible pluses:


 * A Wiki is community based
 * Wiki content is flexible to reflect historical and modern jurisdictions.
 * A page could describe the record evolution. For example a tax record that started in the 1600's as a portion of milled grain that evolved to include luxury taxes in the 1700's and finally became a flat amount of money by the 1800's. The name of the tax didn't change and it looks like one set of records but the researcher will has to know how the context evolved.
 * The links in the Wiki could easily point to online or offline access

Just to try out some ideas let’s take a Swedish parish for example: Let’s say there was a page called:

Records for Arvidsjaur parish, Sweden
With some help, a template was created to try out this idea using tabs. So the main tab could be the records notes and descriptions that are associated to this Swedish parish. The tabs above would point to a tables listing a variety of records that are associated to this parish (Church, Taxation, Land, and Military record pages.)

For example, if you click on the Church tab you will see a table showing what Household examination records are available for this parish.

To play around with the basic concepts I have put in a little data into the Main, Church, and Taxation tabs.