Tag: archival documents

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For the Moravian memoirs the use of the Voyant Tools helps understand more of the idea or the theme of a particular text more easily in one website. In analyzing the text that was given my group has come up with a research question, “How did Esther Latrobe’s relationship with God affect her lifestyle, and help her recover from such illnesses and hardships? ”  There is also a question that I propose and it is, ” Would her values of life be any different if she was put into this time period?” These tools may help us find the answer we need.   However, as Whitley points out “visualizations are intended neither to stand as definitive interpretations of literary text nor to provide direct answers to research question.”(187) 

When looking at the tools that are given it seem that these tools would help us understand more on these research questions. The reason is that many of the traditional tools are usually pen and paper that has only one copy of existence. But in the Digital age that we live, a person is able to access things more quicker and understand the connections of the terms and their usage in that text better and faster. We are able to compare and contrast between text better in finding the differences and “digital technology  (help us) search for patterns and trace broad outlines.” (188)

While using the Voyant tool it has showed the connections of the theme that was around the terms that were commonly used. The key terms that were most frequent in the letters were the Samuel text was lord, time, heart and death. These terms came from the other group that we shared with. By using the cirrus tool it allowed us to visualize the top frequent words in a word cloud. That shows a pattern of religion being the main center of it all. In the Latrobes letters it was about a women who has lived life of misery and sickness in her life, yet having a positive attitude towards her life and to others. Knowing that one day her God will give her a better life after death. With the cirrus tool and mandala tool it allowed me to distinguish the key terms of the Letters in a bigger picture. With key terms being lord, saviuor, dear, god and heart it conveys that most of these texts convey a message that a person life revolves on the teachings of Christianity and what keeps that person living as a good person. There are collocates in this text like, “Dear Saviour let me take my soul at the foot of thy cross,for ever having my eyes fixed on thy sacred body, bearing my sins’ heavy load.”(pg 6) with the Dear and Saviour being next to each other. For example, with the tool of Corpus Collocates it describes  the patterns and amount of times that terms collocate with each other. Being that the most collocate terms that go together are Dear, Saviour and Death. Even though Death is not much of a prevalent word in the Latrobe article. It did have a prevalent theme around it while also giving the same prevalent theme of religion being the main factor of her life. With the Lord being the most frequent term for both text, it describes her wanting advise from God to help her find peace in her life and those around her. One thing to note is that in this letter is that it had more of a emotional story of a person than describing the whole environment.  

In the end, the key terms and the patterns that were shown by the tools give us an understanding of their world and life. It lets us see the prevalent themes of the past that may be common for them, but uncommon for us. As  Whitley would explain it, “visualizations help us perceive patterns in data that we might otherwise miss” (187) in order understand the stories of our past.

 

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Blog #1 – Caleb Broughton

Often times when historians are analyzing an archive, specifically one that is large in size and may take a long time to analyze fully, they run into some trouble with a term that Micki Kaufman uses in her project Quantifying Kissinger; “information overload.” This over abundance of information usually requires multiple different tools and methods for analysis, and when historians are working on this for hours at a time, the work can become tedious, frustrating, and sometime unproductive. This leads to spending more time looking at a screen and figuring out how to use certain methods and tools, rather than focusing attention on the physical archive itself.

Creating a digital artifact from archival documents gives way to so many advantages. First of all, the majority of archival documents are in rough condition, and are very fragile to the touch. If digital artifacts were not a thing, most of what we know about history from these archival documents would be unknown. Some documents are illegible to the human eye but with technology, historians are able to recreate a lot of these archival documents.

Image result for archived documents digital humanities

I think it is true that our physical and emotional relationships to our objects of study are shifting as we move deeper into a digital age. I think they are getting stronger and more intelligent, because a lot of the content that is being created connects directly to our natural human instincts, and can be very beneficial for people. As Whitley says in his paper, “Humans are quite adept at perceptual visual cues and recognizing subtle shape differences…humans are pre-wired for understanding and visualizing shape.” Because of this natural ability that humans possess, these digital tools that transform textual patterns into visual shapes naturally help people grasp certain skills of shape perception. There is even speculation that because this portion of the mind is being activated by these digital tools, it could potentially be accelerating the reading process.Image result for textarc

Whitley talks about creating these things called “concept shapes” out of texts,  to graphically represent data patterns. In order to better understand the content of a document, a group of scholars came up with a method for representing texts as “semi-spherical objects in a virtually rendered three dimensional space.” Wherever there are patterns in the text, the spherical objects “blend together to create a variety of quasi-organic shapes.” This method is one that seeks to help readers identify different patterns that would otherwise be overlooked if it was in a large body of text. For this, I believe it is true to say that digital versions of material texts highlight physical elements of texts that might otherwise pass unremarked.

One way to create online reading interfaces that can more closely approximate the experience of reading physical materials, that Whitley talks about in his paper is TextArc. It is an experiment in spatial reading, and is based off of the idea that seeing and reading are two complimentary processes. Whitley describes it basically as a “balancing act between reading and seeing.” As people are experiencing the text visualization, the eyes and the mind “scan for ideas, then follow the ideas down to where and how they appear in the text”.

 

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Blog #1: On Material and Digital Archives

After visiting several websites that are based on archival materials and browsing through the DH project sample book, I have been able to explore many DH projects. While browsing, I have seen the advantages and disadvantages of creating a digital artifact from archival documents. Specifically, many artifacts are in remote archives and only certain scholars are permitted access. By creating a digital artifact, the documents become widely available for research for people who are restricted by both travel and accreditation. Additionally, these documents are often delicate, sensitive to light, and require extremely special handling. But, when these artifacts are digitized, they no longer require such delicate conditions. This allows the researchers to put more effort into analyzing the document, rather spending time trying to maintain adequate conditions for the document.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages. Specifically, when an archival document can be accessed digitally, it takes away from the special experience of traveling to the archive and handling the actual document. When a document is digitized, the document is often static, presented as a photograph or transcription. This presentation could potentially make a researcher miss an important aspect of the document, such as something that is written more lightly, that they would have been privy to if they were in the presence of the actual document.

As I explored the Moravian Lives projects, the biggest similarity I found was with another DH project, “Transcribe Bentham”. Both projects utilized crowdsourcing. The projects don’t have a sole contributor, but rather many. This method allows for more transcriptions to become available in a shorter amount of time, simply because so many people are able to be working on the project at once.

In the digital age, we are increasingly interacting with textual material on the screen more than on the printed page. Personally, my high school utilized the “iPad Program” and all our readings were digital. Because the interaction with the digital material is overpowering interaction with the printed material, our research practices changed. Post-It notes and highlighters have been replaced with digital annotations. 

Additionally, our physical and emotional relationships with our objects of study are drastically shifting in a digital age. Because archival documents are more accessible now digitally, researchers lose a special bond with the material that they would have felt had they accessed the material in person. This digital difference causes a slight detachment from their objects of study. The sense of seeing the document on a screen is much different than being able to see and potentially touch the document in real life. 

In the physical archive, there are different sources of knowledge and serendipitous discovery than in the digital archive. In the physical archive, researchers may be more likely to interact with other scholars that are studying a similar topic. Physical archives also offer the “wide-angle perspective” (185) that Whitley spoke about. However digital archives offer a different experience. As Whitley writes, “In browse mode, digital archives allow for a wide-angle perspective on their material by trusting to the wanderings of a curious mouse clicker. In search mode, the hope is that a search engine will serendipitously discover information that a browsing scholar or student might otherwise miss” (186). I would not say that the digital archive is better than the physical archive and vice versa, just that the two offer very different experiences. In my opinion, a combination of both may be the best approach for a browsing scholar or student.