# Dataset: Notaries in the territory of Belgium, ca.1650 - 1865
# DOI: https://doi.org/10.34934/DVN/ZDSQI
# Author: Ruben Peeters
# Research assitants: Milan Dupont, Maite de Sola Perea, Louise Ledegen, Lies Lemmens, Edwin Berghmans
# Contact information: ruben.peeters@uantwerpen.be / Social History of Finance, Universiteit Antwerpen


### SOURCE INFO ####
# Source: Liste alphabétique des notaires de Belgique depuis l'origine du notariat jusqu'en juillet 1864 : supplém. jusqu'au 31 Décembre
# 1865, Tarlier H. 1865, p.367. 
# uri: https://worldcat.org/en/title/902539129
# We used a digitized the copy of the Felixarchief (Antwerp, Belgium). The copy can be found here: 
# The copy of the Felixarchive missed pages 5 to 8.  
# We obtained the missing pages from a copy stored at the library of the Belgian Federal Parliament:  # https://opac.kbr.be/BIBFEDERALE/doc/BPB/BPB9919853630101475/liste-alphabetique-des-notaires-de-belgique-depuis-l-origine-du-notariat-jusqu-en-juillet-1864-avec- 

# The dataset contains 13,075 rows and 12,193 unique notaries.

### VARIABLES ####
Rowid : Unique identification number of the observation in the dataset.
Part : Part of the book where the observation is from. (Main, Addition, Annex I or Annex II)
Rowid_Part : Identification number of every observation, within the part that it was from.
Notid : Unique identification number of the Notary
Surname : Surname of the Notary. In some cases this could be the name of an Institution (Administration).
Initials : Initials of the first name of the Notary.
Residence_Transcribed: The location of the office of the notary. (Usually a municipality or city, sometimes a village, region, abbey, or seigneurie). This is the original transcription of the data.
Residence_Clean : The cleaned and homogenized version of the Residence_Transcribed Variable.
Residence : The cleaned and homogenized version of the Residence_Clean variable. This variable is finally linked to the NISCODE.
Notary-Administration : This variable indicates whether the observation was a Notary (Person) or Administration (Greffe/Fief/Curee)
Exercice : The period in which the Notary or Administration was active.
Page_Number : The page number in the original source.
Date_Start : Start date of the Exercice (extracted)
Date_End : End date of the Exercice (extracted)
Date_StartClean : Cleaned version of Date_Start
Date_EndClean : Cleaned version of Date_End
Comments : Gives extra information about the observation. Usually refers to steps undertaken during the post-processing of the dataset.
NIS-Code : The NISCODE linked to Residence_Final. Refers to the NISCODES of 1960s municipalities.

### DATASET FORMATION ####

# The digitized pages were entered into Abbyy Finereader 14. The pages were preprocessed and then transcribed using the automatic OCR.
# The transcription was first checked in Abbyy, then exported to Excel and checked again by a second person to ensure correct transcription.
# Start dates were extracted with the formula: =(LEFT(K12053;SEARCH("-";K12053)-1))*1
# End dates were extracted with the formula: =(RIGHT(K12138;LEN(K12138)-SEARCH("-";K12138)))*1
# The location variable was then cleaned and homogenized in Openrefine 3.5.2, using the Facet Cluster option.
# The cleaned locations were geocoded to NISCODES (Belgium only) for the year 1960. The NISCODES refer to individual municipalities.
# In case of doubt, no NISCODE was assigned. Smaller places without a NISCODE were assigned to the closest place (in geometrical distance) 
# with a NISCODE. In such cases, a comment was made to which place it was assigned. We could not assign a NISCODE for 351 observations/locations.

# In the case of the province of Antwerp, some start or end dates missing in the original Tarlier source, were taken from the document: Register Notant, Inventaris van notariële archieven van de provincie Antwerpen, 1464-1996., BE-A0512_104642_102840_DUT

# We did not transcribe the depositaires or locations where the archives of the notary were deposited.