Author: Riz Zaki

I was born in Bareilly, India. I have visited Japan, France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. I speak Hindi and Urdu.

Categories
Transcription

Reflection on Transcription

One of the major challenges of transcribing the diary entry was understanding Linn’s handwriting. His words sometimes appear crossed out and his letters are unusual in shape. One of the strange things about Linn’s handwriting is its ampersands and punctuation. Beyond the peculiar way he writes his words, Linn’s use of dashes and sentence structure make it difficult to gain a continuous understanding of his message as one transcribes, making it more difficult to reveal words based on context alone.

The instance of names and  outdated vocabulary also contributed to the challenges of transcribing a diary entry. The word “colors’ appears several times and only from context can it be understood that these are  flags. When Linn talks about Shortley I first assumed it was a misspelling of the the word shortly. Based on context after finishing the sentence I was able to deduce this was a proper noun. The instances of misspellings produce problems as Linn’s handwriting is already so difficult to transcribe.

Additionally, losing place within a line of the diary was a significant problem. As I would have to scroll and zoom in, I often lost my place within a sentence and would have to go through an entire paragraph to arrive at my previous point. Overall, Linn’s diary transcription process produced many challenges, but a variety of techniques could be utilized to overcome them.

A capture of my screen during the transcription process.
A capture of my screen during the transcription process.
Categories
Blog #1

On Physical and Digital Archives

I primarily looked at the Indigenous Peoples of North America project and oldweather.org for reflection from the course’s archive. I was struck by the effect of good graphic design on the experience of digital humanities research, beyond the fundamental organization of the site, visual appeal comprises a surprisingly large compone

The search function is one of the most powerful tools in digital databases.
The search function is one of the most powerful tools in digital databases.

nt of digital humanities. The Indigenous Peoples of North America project was especially compelling in its visual layout. The search function was especially important, in the Indigenous Peoples project, the search results allow users to go through document pages and metadata within the thumbnail view. The ability to view full citations and search through tags and keywords are very well managed on the Indigenous People’s project. The project organizes thousands early 19 to 20th century documents and photographs, monographs and newspapers1 in a way where users can search by location, subject. Search functions represent one of the major advantages of digital artifacts. Databases containing millions of dates, people and subjects can be parsed within seconds. This ability was in the most-part unavailable before the information revolution. Multimedia is also one of the advantages of digital artifacts. Users can experience an artifact through detailed imagery and simultaneously listen to audio or narrated material. The Indigenous Peoples project especially contains a feature where selected text can be read by a computer generated voice. 

While most digital humanities projects are created by experts and researchers, some harness one of the Internet’s greatest powers, the wisdom of the crowd. Old Weather aims to help scientists determine mid-19th century Arctic and worldwide weather observation by having users transcribe ship logs. Users can pick vessels and journeys to transcribe logs and collaborate with other users across the globe. The project has completed 39% of logs and has transcribed 63,125 pages. The size of this project demonstrates the things that crowdsourced digital archives can do, transcribing thousands of pages without the need for hundreds of researches. 

Oldweather.org allows users to pick vessels to transcribe logs.
Oldweather.org allows users to pick vessels to transcribe logs.

While there are many huge advantages to digital artifacts, some very key aspects are still better with physical artifacts. The presence of an on-call expert or curator is an improvement over a stagnant website. Physical objects are often hugely complex and details often unseen in digital documents can emerge. 

Categories
Trial Post

Analysis of Mapping the Republic of Letters

Example of origin location of Franklin’s correspondence.

Mapping the Republic of Letters is a project by Stanford University in partnership with Oxford University and several research institutions to quantify and  visualize scholarly networks in the early-modern period. Because of the size of the project it is difficult to produce any network description of an entire career or era with completion. For example, the project attempted to map Benjamin Franklin’s letters, correspondence and travel for the entire length of his life but were overwhelmed by the sheer number of material. Instead, they focused on the years between 1756 and 1762 which was a formative period in Franklin’s life. The researchers focused their efforts on meta-data based on date, location to map Franklin’s map of correspondence. By showing location of origin and date of all of Franklin’s letters one could start to see patterns. Most of Franklin’s letters were from Continental Europe and especially England in addition to America, the mapping of this data revealed the transmission of ideas and Franklin’s own inner changes as well as his influence on others. The website allows users to gain a deeper insight into the project and its findings by looking a several case studies of publication, travel and correspondence of ten leading scholars of the early-modern era. 

Map of Franklin’s letters.

 

Categories
test

Wuzzzup HUMN 100

can you hear me now?