Linn’s Journey from New Bern to Roanoke Island to Elizabeth City: Map and Web App

Linn's Journey from April 17 ,1862 to April 18, 1862

Linn’s Journey from April 17 ,1862 to April 18, 1862

In the past couple of weeks, we have used ArcGis as a form of technology. First, we were instructed how to use the maps,create layers, and add map notes. After doing this, we could create our own maps and upload archival maps to help us see the same landmarks Linn saw in 1862. I specifically chose the map “Eastern Coast” to help me see New Bern, Roanoke Island, and Elizabeth City a little bit more clearly as it was in the mid-nineteenth century. After creating our own maps with map notes and layers, we, then, created an app. This allowed us to show multiple diary entries basically as a story. We could take our audiences, interactively, through Linn’s diary entries and show them where Linn was and what he did. This map layer “Eastern Coast”, however, turned out to be very grainy, so I only used it when necessary and did not need to be zoomed in.

In the article, there is a crucial point: “through observation and testing we are able to understand how the world operates” (Bodenhammer). We saw the maps of where Linn’s journey and diary entries take place, but, until we can physically make our own maps and “test” things out, we cannot fully experience Linn’s perspective. GIS really helps us be present in his diary entries. We are essentially re-living what Linn did. We are trying to, using different aspects of technology, to better get an understanding of this soldier’s life during the Civil War.

The only time I have ever heard about Roanoke Island was in history class. We learned that this was the “lost colony.” After hearing Linn mention Roanoke Island, my mind had drifted back to history class, because this was my personal interpretation of the island. As Bodenhammer writes, “two people who view the same object may interpret it quite differently based on their different assumptions and experiences” (Bodenhammer). Linn had a very interpersonal experience with Roanoke Island, and, I am guessing, he never even thought about the fact it was called the “lost colony.” He may have heard about it, but that is not what comes to his mind when he hears the island’s name.

At the end of the day, “gis is fundamentally what happens in a geographic space” (Bodenhammerr). It is as simple as that. It allows us to take what we have read and be able to visualize it in a way that makes us more aware of what is happening in certain situations. I have never heard of New Bern or Elizabeth City, but GIS helped me understand exactly where Linn was and the encounters he had.

What I Learned From Tagging

Learning how to mark up our documents and then taking what we learned and applying it to our journal entires has allowed me to obtain a deeper understanding about the way that Linn writes about the war. Although the process was tricky and frustrating at points purely because of my lack of experience, I believe that it brought focus to the specific types of things that Linn talks about when he is writing. For example, when going through the version of the Google Docs that was marked up with colors, it was clear that some of the colors were used more than others. For me, I would say that blue and orange were the two most used, while purple, brown, and cyan were the least used. This comments on Linn’s writings because it gives us insight into his writing style, with a focus on people and objects. Although he is descriptive in some places, he sometimes jumps from topic to topic, which is why we see less cyan, brown, and purple.

A lot of what Pierazzo talks about in her piece was visible in our process. For example, there was a large variety in the amount of tagging that occurred, with some people tagging most words, while some just picked out the important ones.  This resonates in Pierazzo’s article when she says, “So, we must have limits, and limits represent the boundaries within which the hermeneutic process can develop”(466). One of my paragraphs is below (A), and i chose to only tag the words that I thought were important and relative.

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A

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B

 

Although I think i did not make a mistake in being sparse, other people heavily marked up their entries (B) which made me come to think about how they thought those words were important compared to how I choose to select my words. Again, this links back to Pierazzo when she says that a digital edition includes words and sections that are “considered meaningful to the editors” (475) and “that one cannot declare once
and for all which features should be included” (475). The degree to which each person marked up their piece was one of the most interesting factors when I looked over everyone else’s entries.

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I also learned a lot in the editorial process, primarily that it is harder to come to conclusions on basic stuff like whether a boat is a place or object than I thought. When we were talking about the cossack and different ways to go deeper in tagging, it changed the way that i thought about this tagging and my reading. When tagging mine, i had a deep internal struggle about how to tag battery, considering that like cossack, it could be both. My struggle was the externalized when we came to class and discussed cossack. When talking about what to mark up and what not to mark up, Pierazzo says that it “depends either on the particular vision that we have of a particular manuscript or on practical constraints” (465). For me, the idea of particular vision is why we disagreed. I saw battery as an place, and when asked about cossack it made sense to me that it would be a place too. Boats represent places for me, but someone made a point that to Linn, they are objects not places, and that makes sense to me. By making it an object but adding the type boat, we were able to come to a consensus. However, considering that we spent so much time arguing over one word, it makes me dread what it must be like to go through an entire edited text. I thought that this was interesting, gave me a better look into the kinds of words and descriptions that Linn uses, and taught me some new useful skills.

Importance of Tagging in TEI

Close reading is a great tool to help categorize people, places, events, and more within a specific text. Using TEI, we analyzed Linn’s diary by choosing what words to tag. For example, one of our class discussions consisted of whether or not “cossack” should be tagged as a place or object. I argued that a cossack, which is a type of boat, is always an object but depending on the context of the sentence, it can be a place, too. In Linn’s diary, cossack was frequently used so we knew that we needed to tag it. We decided to tag it as object because in some instances in the diary, cossack wasn’t always a place.
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However, we resolved the place vs. object dilemma by categorizing it as an object but by also specifying what kind of object it is. Thus, we specified cossack by placing an object type tag as “boat”. By consulting with my peers, I realized that there can be multiple different perspectives and outlooks of a word, phrase or even an entire document. Cossack is a great example of a word that can be interpreted differently depending on its context. I may feel strongly that cossack is an object, but others can interpret it differently. Collaborating throughout Linn’s diary will allow our class to determine and classify words, which will also help clarify different opinions and interpretations.

In general, marking up the transcription has helped me better understand the context and circumstances of Linn. For instance, we individually started separating the people in the database by union and confederate army. Most of the people are union, which is to be expected because Linn is part of the union army and talks about the military men surrounding him. I also learned a little more about the men in the specific diary entry I transcribed.Screen Shot 2014-10-26 at 4.13.46 PMI thought that Alcot, Ripley and Prawe were all part of the union army but they were actually reporters who were supposedly neutral during the war. This helped clarify the context of the diary entry when I knew they were not directly involved in the war. As shown above, Alcot, Ripley and Prawe are reporters for the Herald & Inquirer. Before we started categorizing people, I assumed they were part of the military and I was confused why a newspaper company was mentioned. Now the context of this diary entry makes more sense!

In Pierazzo’s essay “A Rationale of Digital Documentary Editions”, she discusses the process of tagging selection. One of the most challenging aspects of specifying by tagging in TEI is knowing when to stop. You could essentially tag everything but that’s very time-consuming and does not distinguish significant phrases or words from less important ones. Pierazzo writes, “…we might conclude that one possible and tempting answer to the question ‘where to stop’ could be ‘nowhere’, as there are potentially infinite sets of facts to be recorded” (466). This causes a wide variation in interpretation. If there’s no limit, then one would think there is essentially no structure or guidelines between different articles. Although there may not be a hard limit, “the vast majority of decisions we make in this realm are decisions on which all (or most) competent readers agree or seem likely to agree (p. 196)” (466). Pierazzo makes the point that the tags made are (almost) universally acceptable and understood. There is room for interpretation, but the tags are not completely random. Therefore, there is some order when tagging words. Additionally, Pierazzo feels that when tagging, it is important to consider your audience. She writes, “to achieve the purpose of the edition and meet the editors’ needs, one needs to ask which features bear a cognitive value, that is, which are relevant from a scholarly point of view” (469). This demonstrates that the person marking up the document must consider the audience and make thoughtful, educated decisions when tagging. Although there’s no limit or “correct” way to tag words, Pierazzo believes that there are ways to make it somewhat orderly and structured while also having room for different interpretation.

The Linn Diary: Feb 3-Apr 18, 1862

These are the collected transcribed pages of James Merrill Linn’s diary dated February 3 through April 18, 1862. The work was produced by students in HUMN 100, Section 02 – Fall 2014.

Collaborative Edition of February 3-12, 1862 (Bui, Harmatz, Hartman, Landow, Loomis, Medure, and O’Hara): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/Linn_FebCompiled.xml

Collaborative Edition of April 17-18, 1862: (Rosecky, Wigginton, and Zaki)
http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/Linn_AprilCompiled.xml


Hien Bui (Feb 3-5, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary33.xml

Rachel Harmatz (Feb 5-7, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary34.xml

Dale Hartman (Feb 7-8, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary35.xml

Alexa Landow (Feb 8, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary36.xml

Sam Loomis (Feb 8, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary37.xml

Mary Medure (Feb 8-9, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary38.xml

Connor O’Hara (Feb 9-12, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary39.xml

Sara Rosecky (Apr 17-18, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary60.xml

Julia Wigginton (Apr 18, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary61.xml

Riz Zaki (Apr 18, 1862): http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/LinnDiary62.xml


Compiled Edition of February 12-April 17, 1862 (Jakacki – formatting only):
http://www.students.bucknell.edu/projects/HUMN10002/Linn/content/Linn_Feb-AprCompiled.xml

TimeMapper and Chronology of events

TimeMapper is a tool that helps to organize historical figures and events in a chronological order. After you fill in the correct info for your specific event and submit the information, it is then documented in a google doc and is placed into the timeline. In our TimeMapper we created a database of historical events that were happening around the same time that Linn was writing his diary to see what events could relate to James Merrill Linn in the winter of 1862.

Chronology of events is important because if it wasn’t in the correct order the context wouldn’t make sense to the reader and they would have trouble following what was going on. Chronology illustrates the sequence of historical events.

Graphical representation clarifies historical events, because I believe it makes the information more clear and interesting to look at as opposed to just words. It shows the chronological order of events in an organized and easy to follow format.

TimeMapper doesn’t give any representation of the ideas, similarities and connections between different events except for time. In Linn’s narrative the timeline was very helpful in showing the chronological timeframe events were occurring in, but not the connections between the different events.

 

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Battle of Gettysburg

When I was reading Linn’s diary, I was sometimes confused with the specific events he was talking about during that time period. However, when I saw the timeline comparing his story to the rest of the history, I was able to better understand the context of certain events and have a better perspective of why certain things were occurring. TimeMapper helped me to see where Linn’s diary entries were in relation to history around that time period.

 

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King of Madagascar Strangled to Death

In Grafton’s essay he states how he believes that graphic representation is among the most important tools for organizing information. Grafton states that one of the reasons for the gap in our historical and theoretical understanding of timelines is that people generally consider chronology as a kind of study. He says people see them only as distillations of complex historical narratives and ideas. Chronologies work and that’s pretty much enough for the average reader. But this is a false belief. For example, from the classical period to the renaissance in Europe, chronology was held at a status higher than the study of history itself.After creating a timeline called the Chart of Biography, Priestley reveals that “historical narrative is not linear”. He claimed that a linear timeline does not represent the connections between events and historical figures in a precise way.