The Factoid model is a data model used in the field of prosopography. It is one of the most frequently used data models in modern database prosopography projects. [1] [2] The concept of a factoid in the sense used in the model has been attributed to historians Dion Smythe and Gordon Gallacher, and the wider model was primarily elaborated by computer scientist and prosopographer John Bradley. [3]
In the model, a factoid, also referred to as a source assertion, is defined as "a statement by a modern scholar of a thing a source says about a person". [4] Whilst in general usage factoid is sometimes used to mean something that is specifically untrue, in the factoid model there is no consideration of the truth or untruth of a statement at the data level. Factoids within the same database may therefore be contradictory: the objective is to structure the material from the sources, rather than to provide interpretation. [5]
A factoid database is a collection of these factoids, as data entities that thereby connect a piece of source material, a person (or in some cases another entity), and an assertion about that entity or person person.
A major objective of the model was to allow better searches of connected source material, without pre-emptively imposing a particular historiographical viewpoint. [6] It has been noted as an improvement on less structured and provenanced methods used in other historical data collections. [7]
One drawback that has been noted for the model is a potential tendency towards positivism: by directly reporting source information as it appears in the sources, it lacks the capacity to present negative information or scholarly inferences. [8]
Major prosopographical reference works that use the model include the Prosopography of the Byzantine World , the People of Medieval Scotland, and the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England . [9]