Until I began my current research project earlier this year, my work has focused primarily on small, geographically circumscribed groups of scientists, philosophers, and other intellectuals. Consequently, I've never had much use for databases in my research. Now that I'm beginning my dissertation research in earnest, I am being forced to deal with a very new challenge: collecting and organizing information on hundreds of individuals, publications, and organizations from all over the world. Now, if you're like me, you find the prospect of having to collect birth, death, education, and employment records for the subjects of your research to be an exceedingly dull exercise, but one you need to have finished before you can actually begin to sit down and write. Fortunately, with OpenRefine (formerly GoogleRefine) and Freebase you can automate most of this initial data collection process.