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01: Overview

Ch 1 : Overview

Commenced: 12 Jan 2024 Documentation régigée le 07/11/2025 par Barbara Bonazzi mise à jour le 03/03/2026 par Barbara Bonazzi relu le 09/03/2025 par Maxine

Main authors: Ian Johnson, Maël Le Noc (2023 - 2025), Michael Falk (2021-2022), Vincent Sheehan (2016-2020) 

Assisted by: Pierre-Yves Saunier 

1. What is Heurist ?

Heurist website : https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/startup/

Specific reasons for using Heurist:

    Developed by and for Humanities research in collaboration with hundreds of research projects Not tied to any specific project or type of data, handles a broad range of Humanities projects* Entrusts development and management of databases to the user rather than the IT priesthood Quick set up of complex interlinked databases typical of the Humanities, without programming Iterative changes to database structure without corrupting or rebuilding existing data Wide range of data import, export and analysis/visualisation functions Stable CMS web sites generated and stored as an integral part of the database Free and Open Source on GitHub, all data rely on MySQL in a comprehensively documented format Generates instant archive packages in XML and standard SQL with internal documentation Designed for low cost centralized maintenance shared by many projects Humanities-knowledgeable core team and community of users

    *No one system can do everything. Heurist is a generic system designed around the needs of a broad cohort of Humanities projects needing rich interlinked data and metadata databases. It cannot be expected to provide all the domain-specific features of tools such as text analysis, on-site archaeological recording or spatial analysis, but it may still provide a means of collecting and managing data which is later fed into specific analysis tools such as R, QGis, Gephi, TAPOR etc.* 

    2. Learning Resources

    This document aims to give a reasonably concise but comprehensive narrative of Heurist functionality in an order that corresponds as far as possible with a typical engagement with Heurist. It cross-references to the project website, training materials and pages in the online Help system, all of which give more detailed information and are organised in menu order.

    2.1 Website

    There are a range of learning resources, FAQs and links to exemplar projects on the Heurist Network website:

    2.2 Online help

    Our main online help, delivered from a Heurist database via the Heurist CMS, is available here.

    2.3 Tutorial videos

    A series of 8 (as at Jan 2024) tutorial videos have been created by Dr Michael Falk. These are available in the Learn section of the Heurist Network website here.

    The videos are accompanied by a text and annotated images which describes the steps to follow through using training data. These texts and images have been used as a basis for some sections of the current document.

    2.4 Exemplary websites

    Annotated examples of Heurist-generated websites are on the Featured Projects page. 

    Additional projects can be accessed through the Projects Search page (not currently available at 8 Jan 2024 @TODO)

    2.5 FAQ

    The FAQ gathers a set of answers to commonly asked questions. It was created pre 2020, and would no longer cover all the frequently asked questions, but the answers are generally still valid.

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