ALEG

ALEG needs to store dates - dates of birth and death, dates of publication, possibly dates of migration and residence, relationships, occupations. ALEG also records dates which are topics and settings of works. Sometimes these dates may be a simple date, other times a range of dates and sometimes an era (such as "World War II", "The Great Depression", "The Whitlam Years").

In most cases, the day and month are not significant, although they may be recorded if known and thought significant, at the option of the indexer.

Some the the complexities of dates which ALEG must be able to represent are:

1. The date of publication may not be recorded in the publication, but the indexer may know it anyway. In these cases, the date is rendered in square brackets, eg [1906]

2. A date may not be certain. In these cases the indexer gives a 'best guess' at a date or date range, and the system renders it with a "?" suffix, eg:
   • 1906? - indexer thinks that the correct date is 1906
   • [1906?] - date not given, but the indexer thinks that the correct date is 1906
   • 1906-1907? - indexer thinks that the correct date is 1906 or 1907

3. The decade may be known (or guessed at) but the year is not known. In this case the system renders the decade with a "-" for the year of the decade, eg:
   • [190-] - date not given, but the indexer is confident that the date is in the first decade of the 20th century
   • 190- the indexer is confident that the date is in the first decade of the 20th century
   • 190-? - the indexer thinks the date is in the first decade of the 20th century, but is not certain

4. A 'circa' date may be provided, indicating that the date is as nominate or thereabouts, and the system renders it with a "c." prefix, eg c.1906

5. Rather than entering a numeric date, the indexer can use the name of an era for a temporal context. This cannot be used for dates of publication, or birth or death dates but just for dates used as topics and settings.

The system will allow searching based on exact and 'fuzzy' dates. For example, imagine an agent's birthday is entered as:

1. 1906? The system would only return this date in an exact match on 1906 or on a range including this date.

2. c. 1906 The system would only return this date in an exact match on 1906 or on a range including this date.

3. 190- The system would return this date in an exact match on any date in the first decade of the 20th Century, or a range including any year in that decade.

4. 1912-1914 The system would return this date in an exact match on 1912, 1913 or 1914, or a range including any of those years (and hence on a range constructed if the query asked for agents born in the era "World War I").