DATABASES IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH By Charles Harvey and Jon Press Macmillan 352pp, Pounds 45 ISBN 0 333 56843 5 (hbk) 331pp, Pounds 14.99 ISBN 0 333 568443 (pbk)

USING COMPUTERS IN HITORY: A PRACTICAL GUIDE By M. J. Lewis and Roger Lloyd-Jones Routledge, 248pp, Pounds 45 ISBN 0 415 103118 (hbk) Pounds 14.99 ISBN 0 415 10312 6 (pbk)

These two books make very valuable contributions to the area of history and computing, one as a survey of database theory, the other as a hands-on how-to textbook.

Any book whose jacket blurb begins "This is the first book on the subject..." is really lining itself up for target practice, especially when its authors have set themselves the ambitious goal of rendering as much as possible of the current corpus of database theory into a form useful to historians. But by and large they have succeeded. In presenting a survey of database theory in useful historian's English, much jargon has thankfully been lost in translation. The range and order of material covered by Harvey and Press will be very familiar to anyone who has read a computer science or information systems text on databases - basic concepts, types of database software, project life cycles, design and implementation and so on. The "historical research" part of the title is not simply bolted on - all of these topics are firmly located in the context of historical research. The coverage of database theory is always sufficient to map out the areas for historians, and in many areas the book provides as much as the practising historian needs to know. The authors also provide hands-on-the-keyboard "how to" including an excellent introduction to SQL. One keeps wishing the book went a little further, particularly in the chapters on the project life-cycle and database design and implementation where an extra few pages, mainly of illustrations, might help with difficult material.

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While the book as a whole is good, certain sections deserve particular mention, The clear description of record linkage, based on the Westminster pollbooks of 1784 and 1788, is a good exposition of a complex task. The chapter on source-oriented database systems is a clear and up-to-date overview of a topic which is important not only for historians but for everyone with any interest in database theory. The eight short case studies which alternate with the main chapters provide crisp illustrations of the diversity of work in which historians are using databases.

Lewis and Lloyd-Jones have taught history and computing courses at Sheffield Hallam University since 1989. Their Using Computers in History: A Practical Guide is a textbook based on this experience and unequivocally aimed at undergraduates (although there may be older heads who would do well to work through it). Its tone is robustly positive throughout. Computer scientists will hate this book, as the authors take the healthy attitude that you do not have to know much computer science to use a computer. If we made computer scientists know as much about cars as they insist that we need to know about computers, we could mow them down in droves at zebra crossings.

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The book really only requires that the reader knows where to find the "on" switch on a computer. It builds from the simplest introduction through more complicated tasks until the student should be able interrogate any primary data as well as one might reasonably expect of an undergraduate. The presumption is that the reader will be using a PC running Windows with the Excel spreadsheet and Access database software installed.

While this is a safe bet for many academic sites, there is the problem that newer versions of the software already differ in minor details from the versions in the illustrations. However, as university computing facilities are criminally under-funded, it is likely to be some time before the text needs major revision.

Historians whose students do not have access to the software on which the book is based can still look to it for a model of how to construct a set of course notes.

The bulk of the book is a step-by-step guide to using spreadsheets and databases to manipulate historical data. The section on using Excel moves quite slowly, but the database section steps up the pace and within both the progression of skills is quite clear. There is not much to say about step-by-step instructions on how to use spreadsheets and databases - there is a "right" way to write them and Lewis and Lloyd-Jones clearly know this part of their business.

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What separates this book from the hundreds of "how to" computer books (apart from the lesser price) is the choice of data sets, which are mainly drawn from 19th and 20th-century British history, with the occasional nod to Ireland, the United States and the colonies. The standard of living in Sheffield, government expenditure on defence or assisted emigration to New South Wales, to name but a few, are all datasets with which history students in British universities will be familiar. In all cases, the historical context is set, references to relevant secondary sources are provided and the tasks which the students are expected to perform are directed towards using historical data to answer real history questions. This is a history text, not just a computing text with token history. Those who seek for minor errors will find them, and the book is perhaps over-designed. As an introduction to using Microsoft Excel and Access it is excellent but it is a pity that Word does not get a look in.

Most writing on the use of computers in history deals with how they are used for research: there is not much on how students write history. Just as using spreadsheets and databases requires historians to think carefully about sources, using word processors affords an opportunity to think about how historians write and to teach history students to think about the writing of history.

Mike Cosgrave is a lecturer in history at University College, Cork.