[TriLUG] Web code for life histories

[Andrew Perrin]

Folks,

I have a grad student who is working on an online interface for a sort of 
life history questionnaire, and I was wondering if such a thing or 
something like it has been done elsewhere. Let me describe the idea and 
then let me know if (a) you've done or seen something like it; or (b) have 
any ideas about its implementation. There's some possibility we could pay 
to have it developed, so if you think it sounds doable in an 
all-open-source way (preferably postgresql, perl, and apache) let me know.

The idea is that the user would have a relatively short list of events 
s/he could add to his/her life history: educational transitions, got a 
job, left a job, got married, had a kid, etc.  Each of these would have a 
series of particulars (date, reason, etc.).  The most interesting part of 
this is that, as a user adds events, they would show up on a graphical 
depiction of his/her life across the top of the screen, where a black line 
shows the person's whole life (thus far) from birth, and various other 
colored lines represent jobs, relationships, education, and so on.

Thoughts?
Thanks,
Andy

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Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu - http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu
Associate Professor of Sociology; Book Review Editor, _Social Forces_
University of North Carolina - CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA