The Alliance software: a kinship database and graphical approach to genealogy

Abstract

The kinship database and genealogy software “Alliance” has been funded by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science from 2000 until 2008. The Alliance was originally developed and used as a fieldwork tool in cultural anthropology, but it has moved beyond this function to be utilised for a range of different purposes besides research. The Alliance is user-friendly software, which represents multiple family lines and marital linkages in a single database. Genealogies are graphically displayed in a two-dimensional formation. In my presentation, I would like to show you a recent development of the time-line function and to describe some plans for a web application and three-dimensional expressions. This guest lecture was presented on 11 September 2008.