An Investigation of the Digitization of Chinese Genealogical Records

歷史與人的關係密不可分，在中文歷史文獻中，家譜的數量龐大、地域分布廣泛，是歷史研究的重要素材。家譜的編排包涵文獻篇章、世系及行狀，紀錄了個人之基本資訊、世系親屬關係、家譜的編修、源流、家族的倫理規範等，在家族、人口、經濟、地方社會等研究中皆佔有一席之地。 如今電腦科學雖為一項便利的研究工具，對於中文家譜的應用依然相當有限，家譜中的資訊需要被有效的紀錄及存儲，才能為後續研究提供最大的可能。家譜之數位化雖並非近日才有人提出，但資料紀錄格式與方法仍不斷在發展中，其中對於中文家譜文獻視野特性之考量亦尚不足，且少有考慮跨家譜、家族間的聯繫性。因此，如何打造一個家譜數位化系統，供使用者能將手邊之紙本家譜資料轉化為具有可攜性及可擴展性的家譜資訊格式，提高家譜資料後續被有效使用及呈現的可能性，從一棵樹到一片森林，提供人文研究者觀察多本家譜中的脈絡、從而提出問題的環境，便為本研究所欲達成之目標。 本研究以中文家譜為主要對象，提供使用者創建並可即時編修家譜文獻與人物紀錄、並可以簡便的方式紀錄人物間親屬關聯的介面，且在新增人物紀錄時同步畫出人物家族樹，以便瀏覽及編校。研究中也實際輸入紙本家譜，系統中之家譜資料可以Excel或本研究訂立之JPML（JiaPu Markup Language）格式轉出，JPML參考國內外之家譜或人物存儲格式、並引用中國歷代人物傳記資料庫之部分參考資料表，以期望後續之擴展性。Genealogy plays an important role in historical studies. There is a vast amount of Chinese genealogical books, spanning over 500 years and over the entire China proper. The content of a genealogy book usually includes family documents, family tree, kinship, the profiles of the clansmen, ethical norm of family and editing information. These records are influential material for the study of family history, demography, economics, local society, and so on. Computer science can work as a powerful tool for studying genealogical records if we can digitalize and store genealogical data in an efficient way. The idea of digitizing genealogy is not new, but the concept and format are still evolving. The purpose of this study is to investigate an approach and a format to record the information of existing genealogical books, so as to provide an environment for users to transfer the data on Chinese genealogical books into a portable and extendable format; thus enhance the effective use of Chinese genealogical data and provide a way for genealogy researchers to observe and ask questions. The format we propose in this thesis is called JiaPu Markup Language (JPML). Notable genealogical structures such as GEDCOM and China Biographical Database (CBDB) have also been examined and adopted to improve the scalability of JPML. We have also designed interfaces for users to create and edit genealogical records to record the information, especially the lineage and kinship relations between people, from existing genealogical books. All data in our system can be exported into Excel or JPML format