Abstract: The article is an introductory part to a series of materials which historiographically consider and describe Internet document resources and contain finding aids and electronic copies of historical and cultural heritage objects. It includes integrative information resources developed by groups of countries or institutions. These resources aimed at providing remote access to descriptions and electronic copies of historical and cultural heritage site as well as developing methodological approaches (including standards and formats for description and digitization) that were to become common. Several research methods are used in the article. The main are comparative-historical and descriptive ones. At the same time interdisciplinary methods and methods of historical information science were used. The research novelty is the composition of resources described and the historiographic method of their study as well as the identification of methods and traditional historical sources information transformation techniques which are important for historical information science and can be further introduced into the electronic environment and employed in historical studies

Keywords: objects of historical and cultural heritage, historiography, sites, portal, information resources, documentary resources, electronic copies, information system, scientific reference, record

Abstract: The article studies how to use the results of the survey of academic information resources to design the Unified Russian Electronic Knowledge Space (UREKS). The study carried out earlier in the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences (ISISS (INION)) of the Russian Academy of Sciences covered institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations dealing with social sciences and humanities. This article describes information resources of the history academic sector and discusses the distribution of historical information resources by the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences (DHPS) of the RAS, provides the reader with statistics about the information resources owned by the DHPS institutions and enumerates other categories of academic institutions. For analytical purposes the author employs the information resources typology used in the ISISS of the RAS when the navigator of information resources in social sciences (NIRSS) was being created. The article also gives examples of the information resources of the RAS institutions and formulates the goals of information resources catalogue publication. The author puts forward the principles of UREKS formation which demand the study of resources similar to the described one. The article concludes that these are academic information resources (as the most reliable ones) that could be the initial UREKS sources. Herewith, the NIRSS resources must be qualitatively estimated.

Keywords: traditional resources, electronic resources, typology of information resources, information resources Navigator, history, academic institutions, information resources, Electronic knowledge space, resource ownership, resource estimation

Abstract: This work crowns a series of studies addressing the forms of ceramics within the Eastern Europe’s steppe belt in the Bronze Age. These studies aimed at searching for the internal structural arrangement of complexes of ceramics forms as a complicated system with its own laws of development. The form of a vessel was represented as a set of quantitative markers describing its profile. The study covers vessel complexes belonging to Srubnaya, Sintashtinskaya, Dono-Volzhskaya Abashevskaya cultures, cultural formations of KMK circle as well as Pokrovskiy cultural type. When studying complexes of ceramics forms the authors employed cluster analysis with subsequent consideration of the group size correlation diagram and non-compactness ratio of the groups. Structural arrangement of complexes of ceramics forms has been found for a number of cases. The first arrangement corresponds to a reverse power (“hyperbolic”) law dependence on the correlation diagram whereas the second one corresponds to a logarithmic dependence. For complexes with such structural organization the term "archaeological cultural type" (ACT) is proposed. It is shown that ACT has its own "life cycle" consisting of three periods. These are the advent, the hey-day and the decay. 

Keywords: Pokrovsk cultural type, Dono-Volzhskaya Abashevo culture, bronze age, life cycle, archaeological cultural type, cluster analysis, forms of ceramics, Sintashta culture, Timber-grave culture, post-catacomb cultural entities

Abstract: The study aims at unifying the technique of historical mapping and creating a database of symbols for historical maps and geoinformation systems. The author substantiates the advantages of a general symbol set to simplify the reading of cartographic materials and formation of a uniform standard to improve interaction between specialists. Basing on a variety of examples from atlases and cartographic materials the author analyzes historical map legends. He finds optimum solutions providing for the choice of symbols and legend structuring. Comparative method is used. The author examines the existing lists of standardized symbols in other domains of cartography and compares different situations of legend formation in historical mapping. Chronological approach is employed as well to demonstrate the association of map structure complexity with higher requirements to legends. The main research value of the article is the formulation of methodological and technological grounds providing for creation of uniform database of historical map symbols. It is the first attempt to move forward within a sector of historical mapping which somewhat lacked previous base. The article presents the general structure of the reference symbol database, its main resources, the ways of its seeding as well as the algorithm of electronic symbol database creation as a full value tool to form historical maps and geoinformation systems. 

Keywords: mapping technique, conventional signs, Toolkit, GIS, historical cartography, reference base of conventional signs, map legend, catalog of signes, unification, graphic variables

Abstract: The article studies home crafts of the Russian Empire. The territorial framework covers the Russian Empire as a whole including the central guberniyas, Asian Russia, the Caucasus, the Kingdom of Poland and Finland. The study was carried out on the territorial basis. The author analyzes statistics and reveals the home craft distribution level throughout gubernyas and oblasts using localization indices. At the second stage of the study home crafts are analyzed according to groups and types. Guberniyas and centers with prevailing home crafts are identified. The author employs interdisciplinary approach, localization indices, MS Excel statistical, spatial and statistical analysis in the MapInfo geoinformation system. It is the first time in history when home craft localization indices are used within the frames of the whole empire and indices are compared in relation to home craft population and factory workers. The data obtained allowed the author to identify 4 groups of guberniyas. The first group (Kamchatskaya Oblast) totally lacked home crafts. The second group covers 35 regions with the low home craft level scattered throughout the empire. The third group with the medium level of home craft localization includes 21 regions that are also scattered. The fourth group counts 9 guberniyas located in the northern and the central industrial parts of the empire, Tobolskaya Guberniya and Semipalatinskaya Oblast. More than half of the 32 guberniyas and oblasts understudy had low indices of the factory industry localization thus casting doubts on wide-spread conclusions about the decline of home crafts throughout the empire before the First World War. 

Keywords: handicraftsman, handicraft center, MapInfo program, geoinformation system, All-Russian census of population, spatial-statistical analysis, localization index, factory workers, handicrafts, Russian Empire

Abstract: Information technology of geochronological tracking is a total of processes that accumulate and integrate data on geographic relocation of historical figures for a given time interval and represent the results as a generalizing graph in GIS. Hypotheses about stable migration trends are represented as subgraphs of the graph. To test such hypotheses is to search and evaluate statistical significance of relevant graph isomorphism. The article describes these qualitatively new opportunities provided by such an approach as well as relevant mathematical and algorithmic tools. Methodology of the study grounds on graph theory, probability theory, mathematical statistics and statistical accuracy and stability evaluation methods. Information technologies of geochronological tracking form the methodological and program apparatus for automation of selected class of historical tasks, connected to fusion of biographical and geographic data based on GIS. The novelty of the study is a new class of methodical tools for historical studies addressing geospatial social and political processes on the basis of geoinformation systems and relevant technologies. The main theoretical conclusion is the applicability of mathematical tools of confidence figure evaluation when making a decision in historical studies on the basis of geochronological tracking net structures.  

Keywords: algorithmic apparatus, generalizing graph, information technology, interdisciplinary research, statistical hypotheses testing, graphs’ isomorphism, geochronological track, GIS technologies, Geographic information systems, GIS

Abstract: The article addresses the issue of transcribing handwritten materials of the 1950 Norwegian Population Census. These are 801 000 scanned double sided questionnaires. Optical character recognition programs have been improving for over four decades.  Now researchers aim to extend similar techniques to handle handwritten historical source material. The article analyzes studies carried by the Center of Historical Documents at the University of Tromsø which address handwritten text recognition as well as considers the use of various text recognition techniques as far as nominative sources are concerned. Since it is difficult to distinguish and separate individual handwritten characters, the words are mathematically clustered according to image similarity or searched for within sources that have been transcribed earlier. After the recognition quality control, the software uses the line numbers to place the information taken from the transcribed cells. After that the latter become a part of the census database. Moreover, special software has been developed to process handwritten numerical codes, data on occupations and education, etc. The methods offered in the article provide for handwritten texts transcribing quality improvement and can be used to recognize nominative source notes in Russia, for instance, parish registers and vital records. The main goals are still the search for methods and algorithms which optimally link different variables as well as the rationalization of interactive proofread methods.  

Keywords: graphical user interface, Historical Population Register, neural network, Deep learning, OCR, transcription, record linkage, Norwegian population census, databases, hand writing

Abstract: The article describes the subject matter and significance of the international research to practice conference "From the Map of the Past to the Map of the Future" held on November 29 - December 1, 2017 in Perm. The course of the conference, the topics and the content of the main reports and participants are reviewed. The structure of the conference gets specific consideration. It includes the plenary session, foresight sessions and speaker sessions, problem discussions, open popular science lectures, a practical workshop, etc., thus unleashing the potential of the participants. The research methodology is based on the analysis of topics and issues discussed and on determining the place of the conference in modern scientific discourse. The conference materials are considered from the standpoint of historical geoinformatics which can boast a separate session on the conference schedule. The authors conclude that not only professional conferences are important and useful for historians and other representatives of humanities, but also scientific forums of specialists in the field of modern information technologies. 

Keywords: research, session, history, geoinformatics, cartography, map, conference, analysis, source, technology

Abstract: The author considers the main achievements and discussion points of the monograph which proposes the principles of chronology and periodization of the archaeological epoch, its generalized numerical model combining the Fibonacci's and the informatics-cybernetics models. The capabilities of inductive and deductive models are discussed. Numerical modeling is considered within the framework of the deductive approach. The universality of the mathematical model based on the Fibonacci series defining the "golden proportion" is noted. It is shown that the use of a multidisciplinary approach based on mathematical modeling of long-duration archaeological epochs allows us to consider it as a new concept of global history. The author discusses the problems of the monograph within the framework of the methodology of modeling historical processes and developing concepts of “Big history”. Consideration of the issues of periodization of long-duration processes is carried out within the context of their predictability, the relationship of regularities and randomness, mechanisms of self-organization and algorithms of "adaptive random search". The article concludes that it is important to estimate the moments of system information transformations within the framework of the Fibonacci model and emphasizes the role of this model for the formation of new hypotheses in historical and archaeological studies. 

Keywords: technogenesis, systemogenesis, golden proportion, interdisciplinary approach, periodization, archaeological epoch, Fibonacci numbers, modeling, mathematical methods, randomness