The Blueprint for Modernity Database. Making Sense of Different Levels of Structure in the Engineering Profession, 1870-1930

Ted Beatty, University of Notre Dame
Israel Garcia Solares, IIMAS, UNAM

This paper describes the construction of three related datasets, from 3 major institutions in the professionalization of mining engineering: universities and professional associations; mining corporations; and trade journals. The three datasets collect the information from these institutions from multiple sources: One collects data on the professional biographies of professional engineers based on alumni lists and membership lists; the other collects data on corporations in the mining and metallurgical sector of the global economy; and a third one collects data from a trade journal. We describe the historical sources available for building such datasets, our methods of extracting, cleaning, coding, and organizing data, and several strategies for using the data in historical analysis.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 136. Global Histories and Data: Building Maps & Linking Data Across Time and Place