Author: Sarah Rosecky

Reflection on Transcription of Diary 60

Post author By Sarah Rosecky
Post date September 15, 2014
No Comments on Reflection on Transcription of Diary 60

In this post, I will discuss my experience in transcribing James Merrill Linn’s letter. My specific letter was Diary 60, which covered April 17th and the beginning of April 18th. I used the Preview and TextEdit apps side by side to transcribe. I would transcribe one line at a time and add a (\) whenever Linn finished a line, in which I would also start a new one to make sure I would not get lost.

One difficulty that I had in this assignment was obviously Linn’s handwriting. While I am not calling him a sloppy writer, handwritten work has surely changed since the 1860s. One specific instance where I was really challenged was in this screen shot. That word looks illegible to me, so I guessed the word “military.”

A specific word that was always giving me trouble was the word “New Bern.” This was the name

of a place Linn had been. I had no idea if this was a person, place, or thing until I searched it on the internet and found where Linn was talking about. Originally, I thought it had been “New Beme.”

After discussing with my classmates and trying to find out the context of Linn’s situations, I found the transcribing process to be much easier. Discovering certain quirks in Linn’s handwriting also made the process much simpler.

Blog #1

New DH Sample Projects

The new format of the sample DH projects webpage is now very easy to navigate and is user-friendly. Upon visiting the site, I noticed several categories listed at the top of the webpage. They included: archive, visualization, mapping, digital edition, network analysis, textual analysis, and audio analysis. Users can click on the each individual category to find sample digital humanities projects that fall under the selected category. It is now much easier to explore the webpage due to its recent re-organization that is beneficial to all users. On the sidebar of the sample DH projects webpage, there is a section called a “Featured Project.” As of this blog post, the featured project was “The Great Parchment Book.”

blog post #2 pic 2 — Logbook of ship trapped in ice

One specific category is “archive.” Projects under this category are “Old Weather”, “Lincoln at 200”, and “Database of Indigenous Peoples in North America.” These contain artifacts that were scanned and put into a digital format. For example, in “Old Weather” this is a logbook for a ship that became trapped in ice.
While the average student may not have access to the original copy of the logbook, it is now more easily accessible through the use of digital humanities. Damage by human use is less likely to happen due to the fact that less and less people are physically touching the artifacts. The use of digital humanities is also beneficial in that it allows the researcher to be more organized through digital means. Copies of the artifacts create the opportunity to go back to the source multiple times to get most of the information that the artifact provides.

Digital humanities has a lot to offer in terms of advantages to the humanists; yet, there are some drawbacks when it comes to the use of technology. First of all, scanning the artifacts has a lot of room for error. That is something I will need to take into consideration and try to limit when I am using this process. Also, with transcribing the artifacts digitally, it leaves a lot of room for human error and subjectivity. Again, with my best efforts, I will try to not let this happen. Despite some sources of error with the use of digital humanities, it is very beneficial to students and researchers.

Tags archival documents, Digital Humanities, Lincoln at 200, old weather, The Great Parchment Book

Trial Post

Kindred Britain’s Use of DH

Post author By Sarah Rosecky
Post date August 31, 2014

In this post, I will examine how the use of digital humanities in Kindred Britain, created by Standford University, can help us visualize the connections of important figures in previous time periods in British history. This project demonstrates how we may see these iconic individuals as singular influences when, in reality, a vast majority of these people were connected in some way.

The primary focus of this use of digital humanities is visualization. Users can really visualize the social and intellectual networks of iconic British figures throughout history. An individuals’ connection could have had an impact on his or her actions in becoming an influential part of British history.

The project Kindred Britain states in its website that these individuals are “connected through family relationships of blood, marriage, or affiliation. It is a vision of the nation’s history as a giant family affair” (Kindred Britain web page).

Network visualization — View of entire network of iconic British individuals

There is a visual diagram composed of circles that users can scroll over and uncover the name of an iconic British figure. Then, users can drag this circle to another circle, in which users can discover the relationship between two seemingly unrelated important people.

A timeline at the bottom of the webpage puts everything into perspective. Other features include the tabs: “people”, “connections”, and “stories”. The “people” tab categorizes the icons into their roles in history, such as: artists, poets, and families. The “connections” tab shows how two people may have had ties in a strange way. And, finally, the “stories” tab have some interesting finds that the humanists wanted to share to the users.

visual_guide_1 — Example of how to navigate website

In my opinion, this project is extremely successful due to its engaging website. It draws the users in by creating a visual model to show these unexpected connections. This digital humanities project is very well done in taking a large research project and simplifying it to show how many iconic British figures have connections.

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