Approaches to Electronic Processing of Archival Mass Sources: Reformatting or Creating Digital Resources

Abstract

There are two approaches commonly applied in research to digitize primary data sources: problem-orientated and source-orientated. The first one is more economical, efficient and flexible. What we get, however, is a single-use resource. The second approach is aimed at designing a system that would contain the complete set of authentic data. Thus, the system would be suitable for different purposes, but it would take much more time to construct. This paper analyzes a case of two sets of primary data and the problems faced when designing and creating a digital multi-purpose resource system. The first data set includes primary forms of the All-Russia Communist Party Census of 1922 and 1927. The second set comprises family budget records taken during budget surveys of 1929 and 1963. Both sources have a complex hierarchical structure, difficult to adjust for data normalization. Finally, the records taken in different years characterize the dynamics for specific social groups, which presents us with the challenging task of organizing this information and solving the problem of incompatibility between the structure of the records. All the above-mentioned characteristics can lead to the loss of primary data when converting them into a database. When creating a digital resource system, it is essential to develop the right digitization strategy, one that is able to compensate for data loss and able to support a system suitable for a variety of purposes and adjustable to the individual needs of each user.