I decided to focus on two of the sample DH projects: Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts and the Belfast Group Poetry. The primary DH focus for Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts seems to be preservation and archiving and the secondary focus is digital edition. These DH focuses were definitely the best methods for this type of subject matter. The website houses the original text through photos and it provides a transcribed version for an easier read. This is a great way to preserve the original writing while also creating a digital copy. Anybody worldwide can read Jane Austen’s manuscripts, the digital edition of these materials increases accessibility. Given the age and the fragility of Jane Austen’s physical text, archiving and digital edition is a no brainer.
The Belfast Group Poetry’s primary DH focus is networking and mapping. However, visualization plays a big role in this site as well, and can be considered the secondary DH focus. The Belfast Group refers to a weekly writing workshop founded by Philip Hobsbaum around 1955 and this project primarily uses networking maps to show all of the people that were involved in this group. Mapping and using visualization is definitely the best way to share this information. Instead of just simply listing who was involved and attended these workshops, the networking maps provide an interactive and exciting visual aid that displays all kinds of information. There are maps that show simply how these people were connected, there’s another one that shows who was involved with the group over the two time periods that the Belfast Group was up and running, and yet another that shows where the group members lived and worked. Since the main point of the site is to show the interconnections between group members, mapping these connections is the easiest way to represent the data.
Jessica Hom is currently a sophomore at Bucknell University. At Bucknell, she plays on the varsity softball team and is currently undeclared. She is from Syosset, NY and is a graduate from Syosset High School.