ABSTRACT

In popular parlance, databases are nothing more than big repositories of information. In reality, though, they can be important avenues through which we engage our research projects. A database, according to our definition, is a rigorously organized set of data whose informational patterns help us to maximize the number of possible questions we can ask of it. If you just need to archive some information, for example, a database probably is not what you need. If you just want to alphabetize a list of people or to sort a list of authors by birth date, a database probably is not what you need. A simple spreadsheet can easily handle those cases. But if you are embarking upon a project in which you will be actively engaging with your data, pushing its limits, and asking challenging questions of it – finding patterns, seeing changing dynamics over time, locating anomalies, looking for missing information – then you will need a database.