Managing Ethnographic Data with askSam

Abstract

I have been using askSam to manage data and plan research on two projects: a study of the cultural aspects of multilateral peacekeeping, and a multidisciplinary project to prevent blinding trachoma in the Egyptian Delta. Although these projects require very different kinds of data management and project planning capabilities, askSam has served well in both. askSam was first released as a textbased database program which allowed data to be stored in &dquo;free form.&dquo; In addition to text stored in this fashion, askSam had the capability to set up explicit fields (like those in traditional structured data bases) orcontextual fields implied by relations between data elements. Data were stored in records limited in size to 20 lines. Only a single file could be queried at a time (making askSam a flat-file database). Retrieval was relatively powerful because a combination of free form text and values in explicit or implied fields could be used in complex queries. However, the limit on record size and its limit to searching a single file made aslcSam an interesting but limited program for anthropological use.Over the last five years, asksam has been developed in a ways that overcome these limitations. Record length limitations were removed by providing a mechanism for logically linking records together into &dquo;Documents.&dquo; In version 5, although the program still organizes information in records and documents, the user need never be bothered by the technicalities of this approach. A hypertext system, allowing querying across multiple files, was implemented. Version 5 also incorporates true relational abilities, making it possible to relate data in one file to those in other files. With the release earlier this year of version 5, askSam becomes, in my opinion, a program of choice for managing ethnographic data on IBM-PC compatible microcomputers.This review illustrates askSam as a tool for anthropological research. I consider first using it as a flat-file database. Then I describe a simple implementation of askSam to manage a database consisting of multiple files.Some askSam Preliminaries askSam nms on an IBM PC, XT, PS/ 2, or true compatible with at least 384K of free RAM. It requires MS-Dos 2.0 or higher. askSam can be used on dual disk drive machines, though one of its advantages is that the size and number of files it can work with are limited only by available disk space. Thus, a hard disk is useful. An unlimited number of records can be placed in an askSam file, as long as there is available disk space. Records can be logically linked to form documents which also may be of unlimited size.Data can be entered into askSam directly using the program's full screen editor. (Alternately, askSam can import ascii files. This means field notes can be created using any word processor that can produce an ascii disk file.) For entries which repeat information or field names, &dquo;key tem-plates&dquo; can be assigned to the function keys. Then one of these can be loaded automatically whenever the Add option is select...