My wonder twin buddy Andy has an article in the inaugural issue of The Code4Lib Journal, a publication that arose out of the Code4Lib conference and community. Andy does a lot of work to digitize and make information about the historic Pullman district in Chicago available online, almost entirely as a labor of love and with no real financial or administrative support. To me, he is an unsung hero of the digital world, and I am proud to call him my friend.

Connecting the Real to the Representational: Historical Demographic Data in the Town of Pullman, 1880-1940

“The Pullman House History Project is a part of the Pullman State Historic Site’s virtual museum and web site (http://www.pullman-museum.org/) which links together census, city directory, and telephone directory information to describe the people who lived in the town of Pullman, Illinois between 1881 and 1940. This demographic data is linked through a database/XML record system to online maps and Perl programs that allow the data to be represented in various useful combinations. This article describes the structure of the database and XML records, as well as the methods and code used to link the parts together and display the data.”