Description
In Eastern Europe there is no database that contains information about the population of the past which may be capable of answering a diversity of demographic queries. The attainment of such databases is absolutely necessary, especially since in Europe there is indispensable support for quality research. The main aim of the Historical Population Database of Transylvania (HPDT) project is to build the first historical database of Transylvania’s population, covering the period 1850-1914. An important outcome of the project will be the validation of the HPDT in the Central-East European scientific space as a benchmark of excellence in research practices. The existence of a model and of a regional research unit will be an incentive for other initiatives, contributing to the scientific development of this region of Europe. The project results will be oriented towards both the scientific community and the socio-economic environment. The role of the NHDC entails support and consultancy for overcoming any methodological issues related to the organization of the database which might arise during the project’s implementation. The University of Tromsø contributes with the modules regarding the personnel’s training and with the expertise that is needed in order to develop and maintain the database. The Norwegian partner’s support ensures the initiation of a complex database and the training of the scientific and technical personnel necessary for its expansion, as no similar instruments exist in Romania.
Summary of project results
The new scientific requirements of the past couple of decades have imposed a change of perspective in the study of populations, shifting interest from the study of demographic regimes, of data aggregated strictly for longitudinal analysis, to research on the life course of people, based on micro-social level data. Family reconstitution used to be considered the main traditional analytical tool for this purpose but this stage has been overcome, and analytical tools have been developed so as to benefit from the entire wealth of information on the lives of individuals that is available to historians, marking the transition, in other words, to event history analysis. This entails, however, new requirements and demands as regards the manner of organizing the available data. Historians have been creating such databases for nearly half a century, based on data available in archives (parish records, tax records, censuses and population registers). Even if the merit of longitudinal data has been acknowledged for a long time, access to historical data of this kind is limited, since the construction of these databases is complicated, time consuming and requires adequate funding. Romania does not developed such a tool before 2014 and it was generally acknowledged that without a database the historical research on population is no longer possible. The “Norwegian Project” aims to build this complex instrument for social research – a database for historical population covering the second half of the 19th Century. The secondary objectives were to create a pool of data that will allow a more extensive and more complex analyses in the field of human file in the past and to link the Romanian researches to the European effort to reconstruct the population trajectories in history. Also, one of the project purpose was to determine people to reconsider the role of historical information on population for the current issues related to the population ageing, health problems, migration, etc. The project beneficiaries are the scientific community, throughout this complex research tool, the HPDT database, and the society as a whole, due to the genealogical interface of the database – an online platform accessible via internet where a user can find main genealogical information about his/her ancestors. The genealogical interface is available at: hpdt:4080.
Summary of bilateral results
The Norwegian Historical Data Centre at the University of Tromsø is a national institution under the Faculty of Social Science at the Arctic University of Norway whose aim is to computerize the Norwegian censuses 1865 onwards together with other civil state documents. The NHDC developed the Norwegian Historical Population Register since 1981. Their expertise in the field of population databases and our previous cooperation during EHPS-Net project implementation recommended NHDH for this excellent partnership. Taking part into a project such as HPDT fits perfectly the NHDC-UT’s objectives, allowing close collaboration with a partner who would benefit from its expertise and, whose success would reflect on NHDC-UT’s scientific image. Furthermore, although the information hosted by HPDT does not directly concern Norway, the database building process has the potential to help improve future database building activities, by highlighting bottlenecks and contingencies and providing solutions for them. The expertise provided by the Norwegian partner involved a permanent link between the NHDC-UT and the CPS-BBU, concretely manifested in organizing workshops that provided theoretical and, especially, practical training, and exchanging information about each stage of the project. The role of the NHDC also entails support and consultancy for overcoming any methodological issues related to the organization of the database which raised during the project’s implementation. The partner was involved in staff training (one week intensive training in Tromso, two workshops in Cluj), technical and logistical support – files with standardized information were sent to the partner who adapted an automated linkage program to be applied to our information. Also, they were active part of project dissemination activities, through conferences (Valecia, Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, Ekaterinburg, Vienna). The financial support ended in April 2017 but the HPDT team still benefits from the collaboration and joint-research with the representatives of the international scientific community who share the same view on the importance and future development of large historical databases.