Progress Update for June

Good progress is being made and we have now delivered the new data sources as planned!

Data Sources

A key target was to complete the load of the new data sources to HALOGEN during June and this has been achieved. Well done Olly and Andrew !

The coverage of the PAS data has been increased to all of England. The Capelli data and 1881 Surname census data has now been added to the database.  

The load of an additional source of surname data has been requested and will be added over the next few months.

Tools Development and Evaluation

Development of prototypes of the ‘data extraction tool’ (using Business Objects) and a ‘web based enquiry tool’ continues.

A plan for the iterative development of the ‘web based’ enquiry has been agreed. The second iteration of development is now complete and the system was presented to users at Nottingham University's Institute of Name Studies on 28^th June.

Other

A communications plan to support internal dissemination activity relating to the project has been drafted for Board approval.

We had our first Project Board meeting on 27^th May and that went well.

Dave Flanders, our JISC Programme Manager has scheduled a visit for 2^nd August.

Progress Update for April

Good news - the resource issue that has held up progress in March and April has been resolved.
Olly Butters has joined the team and made an immediate difference.

Progress is summarised below:

Data Sources 

The new Cappelli date source is now loaded into the database and being tested.

The 1881 Surname Census data has been reviewed and work to calculate parish centroids is well advanced. Once we have parish centoid data then the information can be added to the database and tested.

Tools for Researchers

The requirements for the 'web based query tool' have been reviewed and agreed with Jayne Carroll of Nottingham University's Institute of Name Studies (the owners of the Key to English Place Names data used by HALOGEN).

Work on developing prototypes has started and the target is to demonstrate the first cut products to the project team and key research users in late May/early June.

The first Project Board meeting is now scheduled for 27th May. Onwards !

Project Update for March 2011

In terms of project progress we have achieved less than we planned in March. This is due to one of the key development team members not being available due to a backlog of support work and the need to support another high priority project for researchers at the University (we are developing a hosting service for researchers).

The work on loading new data sources; addressing known problems with ArcGIS and the Key to English Place Names data has all been impacted.

That said the good news is that to address this problem (hopefully for the life of the project !), and to catch up lost time, the opportunity to recruit additional temporary resource has been taken and Olly Butters joined the team on 4^th April for 6 months.

Olly has been working on Physics and Astronomy projects and has good MySQL/PHP skills and a lot of experience of curating multiple/large data sets.

The 1881 Surname/Census data has been obtained and is being reviewed.

A discussion paper covering the tools evaluation has been issued of review.

A training workshop has been held for members of the Roots of the British research collaboration to allow them to get to grips with ArcGIS and HALOGEN data.

Requirements for the 'web enquiry' have been agreed and documented with the research user community.

Key acheivements include:

"Small WIN(s") & "FAIL(s)" - Progress Update for February 2011

February Update & Issues

The project has now formally started and an internal project proposal has been approved.

Resources have been allocated and the contract of our GIS specilist has been extended to cover the specialist GIS resource required to support this project.

Good progress has been made on the Data Sources Work Package (WP2). The HALOGEN system has been extended to include a full down load of Portable Antiquities Data (PAS) for all English counties. The increase in the volume of PAS data has created problems with the use of the ArcGIS tool used by the team (see issue below).

The project team have changed the scope of the Data Sources work slightly and agreed that 2 new sources of data will be added. These will be additional Genetics data from the published datasets of Capelli and the 1881 Surname/Census data from Kevin Schurer’s work with the Essex Data Archive at the University of Essex.

This later source is a replacement for the surname distribution data from the Archer Surname Atlas originally referenced in the project proposal. Initial investigations identified issues with the use of this data which have been addressed by the Essex Data Archive.

Requirements relating to the Capelli data have been agreed and the source data obtained. The data has been enhanced by the addition of relevant spatial data. Design work to include this in the HALOGEN database is in progress.

An initial meeting has been held to review the format and content of the surname census data from the Essex Data Archive and further sessions are planned.

Extension of PAS Data – Impact on ArcGIS

The addition of extra PAS data has caused problems with the use of shape files in ArcGIS. To temporarily overcome this issue PAS data is being extracted in 3 separate files for use with ArcGIS. The team continue to investigate a permanent fix to the problem.

Any hints or tips welcome !