Category: Trial Post

The Kindred Britain project aims to create a database of important people, mainly in Britain, but also from around the world, and to catalog family connections between them all.  The site accomplishes this mainly through the use of prosopography and visual networking.  Every person in the network has a summary of their family and their careers, a timeline of major events in their lives, and their connections, by blood and by marriage, to other people in the network.

The connections are the main focus of this project, and so a lot of work has gone into the visual networking element of DH.  Putting any two people together will result in the database tracing a path through family ties to connect the two people together.

The project’s goal is to represent English history as a sort of family affair, drawing connections between kings and poets, actors and scientists, people from all walks of life who may have lived centuries apart, or may have been born the same day.  The focus on connections as the goal of Kindred Britain dictates the use of visual networking as the main method used to display the information.

The website offers many preset scenarios to new users, including connections between famous rivals, authors and the subjects of their writings, and people buried in neighboring graves.  These springboard ideas spark users to ask their own interesting questions and do deeper research into the intricate connections between major historical figures.

Or, users can ask slightly less scholarly and more frivolous questions like “What’s the connection between William Shakespeare and Arnold Schwarzenegger?”  The database can answer those just the same.

Overall, the Kindred Britain project is a great example of the goals of the Digital Humanities: taking rather obscure and loosely organized data, and putting it together in a way that is accessible to the public.

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).

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.

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.

In this post I will describe the importance of the Livingstone’s 1871 Field Diary project. For starters, this project makes it possible for the user to understand and delve into the life of David Livingstone. Livingstone was a British abolitionist and missionary who traveled and explored Africa. While in Africa, Livingstone kept a diary going. However, since the paper he was writing on was very fragile, his works remained illegible up until now. The main approach to this project is transcription, and through spectral imaging and processing technology it is now possible for the public eye to view, read, and analyze the works of Livingstone.

This is an image of what a typical page in Livingstone’s diary looked like. As you can see it is impossible to make out even one word. The field diary is now available in PDF form thanks to this project.

Mapping is also an important part in understanding Livingstone’s journey. Although it is not explicitly stated anywhere, I assumed that the red outline is the route in which he traveled. This map gave me an idea of the specific geography in which the events took place. Also, the map put his journey in perspective for me and truly illustrated how long and far Livingstone traveled in order to fight for his beliefs to fight against slavery.

An additional secondary approach that this project is useful for is close reading. Through the combination of transcription and close reading it is possible to analyze Livingstone’s words in order to piece together his true experience. History merely teaches us major events that occur, for example, the meeting depicted in the image to the right of Reporter Morgan Stanley and Livingstone. However, this digital project provides the viewer with much more. The diary informs the reader of Livingstone’s interior conflicts and gives the reader a strong perspective of his true nature and personality. As a result of this, the reader can understand Livingstone’s motives, and can gain even more respect for his accomplishments knowing all he went through in order to achieve them. The digital resource gives the public an inside scoop on the life of David Livingstone that could not have been acquired any other way.

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. 

One of the links on the website takes you to the archives, which has a series of visualizations, mappings, distant readings and close readings. Posted below is a picture of Abraham Lincoln and his family in 1862 found in the archives. This shows that Lincoln is a family man, although the family members including Lincoln seem melancholy. I assume that the Lincoln’s are sitting together in a sorrowful manner because of the Civil War, which was from 1861-1865. This is one among many visualizations on this particular website.

Another approach in this project is close readings. The one I chose is an anonymous hate letter written to Lincoln in 1861 shown below (I apologize for the blurriness).

Unfortunately, I can only read bits and pieces of the letter. In lines 5-8, it reads, “You are destroying this country. Damn you-every breath you take”. This letter was written anonymously, so this disdain and hatred towards Lincoln could have come from a large group of people or just one person. I feel that the visualization of his family correlates to the hate letter by means of the Civil War. As President, Lincoln had to make crucial decisions that were unpopular amongst many. This could be a contribution to why Lincoln’s family looks unhappy.

The archives provide a timeline for the public to see in chronological order a series of visualizations, mappings, distant readings and close readings. These different approaches allow viewers to piece together parts of Abraham Lincoln’s life that would not typically be found in textbooks. Although one may not understand one specific visualization in a certain period of time, all of the different primary sources pieced together give a larger context and understanding of what is actually happening. I found this website incredibly easy to navigate, allowing the viewer to comprehend the material and draw conclusions from the visualizations, mappings, distant readings, and close readings.