home/database/database-construction.md

@@ -14,7 +14,21 @@ The database has also been manually curated as a means to clean it and tidy it u
 
 ##  Biographical and bibliographical information
 
-A database of texts, comments and people of Chinese history relevant to the project has been started separately and was then merged into the semantic database.
+A database of texts, comments and people of Chinese history relevant to the project has been started separately using Heurist [^6] and was then merged into the semantic database.
+
+The reasoning behind this merging were the following ones:
+1. The design of the Heurist database was too different from the architecture of CBDB which was taken as our model of inspiration;
+2. The elements on time, people and texts were kinds of duplicates in both databases;
+3. These elements were not only useful for editorial purposes: they were needed to provide the information about lexical occurrences;
+4. Connection between two databases was not an easy process.
+
+Time periods follow the ones used in CBDB with additional information on how some periods are linked to others (for example the Liang 梁 dynasty is part of the Six Dynasties 六朝 period). This is especially useful when information on a person or a text is not precise enough to situate it within one dynasty.
+
+Information on people was manually documented based on databases or database crawlers (CBDB, Ctext [^7], Academia Sinica [^8], IdRef [^9], VIAF [^10]) and on reference biographical dictionaries (especially Loewe [^11], Knechtges [^12], Chaussende [^13]) completed by historical primary sources (mainly biographies in dynastic histories). All database and database crawler identifiers were recorded as a means to simplify identification. Priority was given to recording different names (family name, personal names, social names, posthumous names, etc) and dates of birth and death.
+
+Information on texts was partly inherited from the lexical database. It was curated and enriched manually with titles of interest in the corpus. Titles and alternative titles and relations between texts (preface to, commentary of, included in, etc.), text and people (authored by, sent to, etc.), and text and time (produced/published in) were documented.
+
+Some geographic information has been found in the texts and suggest it would be useful to document it in a separate table. This task has yet to be carried.
 
 ## References
 
@@ -22,8 +36,24 @@ A database of texts, comments and people of Chinese history relevant to the proj
 
 [^2]: Luo Zhufeng 羅竹風 (ed.). _Hanyu da cidian_ 漢語大詞典. Shanghai 上海: Cishu chubanshe 辭書出版社. 13 vols. 1986–1994.
 
-[^3]: Fuller Michael A. (ed.), _China Biographical Database Project_, 2017 (CBDB =  https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb)
+[^3]: Fuller Michael A. (ed.), _China Biographical Database Project_. 2017. CBDB = (https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb).
+
+[^4]: Schalmey Tilman. “Raw frequency data: Thoughts on "Reliable" Learner's Vocabularies for Classical and Literary Chinese”. Teaching Classical Chinese | Zum Unterricht des Klassischen Chinesischen | Wenyan wen jiaoxue 文言文教学. Ostasien Verlag. 2021: 251–261. (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5638881)
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+[^5]: Despeux Catherine (ed.). Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale : Étude de manuscrits chinois de Dunhuang et de Turfan. Paris: Collège de France. 3 vols. 2010.
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+[^6]: [Heurist] (https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/startup/)
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-[^4]: Schalmey Tilman, 2021. “Raw frequency data: Thoughts on "Reliable" Learner's Vocabularies for Classical and Literary Chinese”. Teaching Classical Chinese | Zum Unterricht des Klassischen Chinesischen | Wenyan wen jiaoxue 文言文教学. Ostasien Verlag. 251–261.) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5638881
+[^12]:
 
-[^5]: Despeux Catherine (ed.). Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale : Étude de manuscrits chinois de Dunhuang et de Turfan. Paris: Collège de France. 3 vols. 2010.
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