Author: Dale Hartman

Transcription Reflection

Transcribing my page from Linn’s diary was a new kind of challenge that I had never come across before, and I think I learned quite a bit from the experience. Overall, the process went a bit smoother than the daunting task I imagined in the beginning, but I still came across my fair share of issues along the way. For example, the variations in Linn’s

Transcription process 1 — One of Linn’s less-legible sections

writing style tended to throw me off, particularly when his handwriting became small and rushed. Individual letters seemed to clump into bigger ones, or big ones break down into smaller. I experienced the most trouble of this sort in the final lines of the page, where Linn began to write smaller to fit all his ideas on a single sheet.

I thought that this project was a great introduction to the wide field of Digital Humanities; a hands-on activity dealing with one of the fields basic forms. I learned a few small, semantic facts from this project (that &c is an abbreviation for et cetera, for example), but I also took away some bigger ideas. This project gave me a better understanding of the interpretive skills that are necessary when dealing with the humanities. I also developed a strange appreciation for the work I was doing, an understanding that these words may not have been read for over a hundred years, and we’re trying to make them available to everyone.

Transcription process 2 — The abbreviation

Blog #1

Archives: Physical and Digital

Post author By Dale Hartman
Post date September 7, 2014

Looking at the new Sample Projects site, all of the featured projects have been separated and grouped based on what kind of data was collected, and form of digital media the raw data was translated into. Categories such as Mapping, Visualization, and Network Analysis contain projects that are very visual-based, while others, such as the ones in the Archives section, deal with and create mostly text-based artifacts. I looked in-depth at the Old Weather project in the Archives section.

Old Weather - Transcribe — The process of transcribing original documents into raw text data.

The aim of this project is to transcribe old ship’s logs from the 1800’s and early 1900’s. The data contained in those logs are useful for researchers in many different fields, from naval historians to climate specialists. One powerful benefit of choosing to digitize the archives is that all of these interested researchers are now able to access the data without trouble.

Old Weather - Our Weather's Past, the Climate's Future — An overview of the scale and progress of the Old Weather project.

It is important to note the scale of this project. There are well over 100,000 pages of data from dozens of voyages to be transcribed. A team of researchers with the original documents would never be able to get through everything in a reasonable amount of time, so the team behind the Old Weather project rely on another major benefit of their digital archives: crowd sourcing. Just like the previous idea how anyone can access the final data, thousands of people can also help to interpret the raw data.

For all the virtues of digital archiving, however, it does have its flaws. When transferring documents over into a digital format, you can only transfer what you think to look for. Some information can be lost unless someone in the future wants, for some reason, to take another look at the originals. Crowd sourcing also has some flaws. While it is nice to have extra hands doing the work, unskilled hands can possibly do more harm than good, and create more work for the research team.

The most difficult part of our project will probably be interpreting the various documents we will come across. This hurdle will just have to be overcome as we gain experience.

Tags accessibility, archive, Crowd Sourcing, old weather, transcription

Trial Post

A Look at Kindred Britain

Post author By Dale Hartman
Post date August 31, 2014

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.

Kindred Britain_2 — The personal summary page and timeline of Ralph Vaughan Williams, shown in a collection of major musicians in the database.

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.

Kindred Britain_1 — Just in case you were wondering.

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.

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First Blog Post

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