Development of a system for producing property-owner time lines with educational applications.

摘要

Purpose. The major purpose of the study was to research, define, plan, and devise a system appropriate for educational and commercial purposes, to be used to create an electronic database in which historical data from land records would be stored. From the database, information on geographically and historically related tracts of land would, through the use of unique identifiers, be retrieved as time lines of property owners.; Procedure. Current computer storage and retrieval systems were investigated. Criteria for the proposed system were developed, and plans were devised for storing data and retrieving information as time lines of property owners in particular geographic areas and in specific tracts of land. Research was conducted on sample tracts of land and data were entered in a computer database.; Results. Using the identification system, three model time lines, one for each of the three most commonly found land configurations, were produced. Models were for land currently or previously lying within (a) one county and one original survey; (b) one county and two or more original surveys; and (c) two or more counties and one original survey.; Conclusions. This database or other databases using the same criteria and method can be utilized in the classroom as well as by religious scholars, historians, genealogists, historical novelists, folklorists, organizations that stress the historical significance of individual persons and for demographic, sociological, and anthropological studies. Such databases are also appropriate for use by land title and abstract companies, practicing attorneys, and real estate and petroleum industries.