History Examples

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Per the microformats process this is an examples page documenting existing real world examples of historical information published on the Web, towards the development of a history microformat.

The Problem

History seeks to show and explain change over time. With that in mind, how should we mark up content that has specific historical contexts, meanings, and/or values?

In particular, hCalendar, which can otherwise be used for marking up historic events, lacks the capability to record vague dates and eras such as:

  • "circa 1950"
  • "17th century"
  • "Jurassic period"
  • "middle ages"
  • "late November" and so on.

Likewise, hCard does not have facilities for "flourished" and other genealogy related details.

Real-World Examples

Historical Timelines

Tools for Timelines

  • Historical Event and Markup Linking (HEML) Project includes an "XML schema for historical events which describes the events' participants, dates, location and keywords; the schema associates these with source materials in print or on the web" and "XSLT stylesheets that combine conforming documents and generate lists, maps and graphical timelines out of them."

HTML-based Timelines

Image and Flash-based Timelines

Image and flash-based timelines are included to get a sense of what content might be included, even though the content isn't marked up in these examples.

Historical Maps

Tools

  • Gutenkarte - Allows you to map geographic locations in texts
  • Metacarta Map Rectifier - Allows you to place and rectify maps over a base map. Uses Google Maps (I think). Lots of examples of historical maps layered over modern maps for comparison.

Map Sites

General History Sites

Reference

Bloggers and Weblogs

Museums and Exhibits

Types of Historical Information

Dates and Time Periods

Centuries
Decades
Days

Events

People, Biographies, and Profiles

Most biographical profiles provide dates of birth and death, detail important events with which the person was involved, and outline general historical contexts in which the person lived and participated.

The following timelines provide a comparative list of the timeframes in which select political leaders around the world were in power:

Places

  • ...

Searching

  • Time search time-based search engine (requires Javascript)

Existing Practices

  • ...

See Also