19.023 digital microhistory

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 23.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 06:52:55 +0100
         From: Stan Ruecker <sruecker_at_ualberta.ca>
         Subject: RE: 19.008 digital microhistory

>Dr. Naomi Standen wrote:
>
>Do the following count?
>
>Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, http://www.ecai.org/
>Chinese Historical GIS, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/

I would say there is no question that they count as impressive pieces of
work, and thanks for drawing them to my attention. A database of 30,000
individuals also sounds like the kind of rich body of information I had in
mind, although I would want to find out how much narrative text it
includes. What I didn't see at a quick glance, and I may just have missed
the right spots, is the placement of data in a context other than a map. I
do think maps are great, but what I've been thinking about is the use of an
illustration or diagram that itself conveys meaning. The Minard example is
in some ways both a very simplified map and a timeline, on which there's
the summary of a catastrophic narrative. By taking (or developing) some
image like this, that is itself quite evocative, and using it as the basis
for an interface, I would like to see if we could get interfaces that are
at each level both visually arresting and informational narrative objects.
Does that make sense?

yrs,
Stan

>===== Original Message From "Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard
McCarty
<willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>)" <willard_at_LISTS.VILLAGE.VIRGINIA.EDU> =====
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 8.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 06:46:47 +0100
> From: Naomi Standen <naomi.standen_at_ncl.ac.uk>
> >
>
> >I guess what I'm doing is advocating for the creation and study of
> >this kind of zoomable interface, which has meaning at all three of
Bertin's
> >level. It would also be important to create further tools to allow
> >different ways of configuring the diagram/interface for different
purposes,
> >based on the kinds of information the (hypothetical) collection provides.
>
>Do the following count?
>
>Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, http://www.ecai.org/
>Chinese Historical GIS, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/
>
>They don't give you individuals (yet), but the principle is the same.
>Locating individuals will become possible when Robert Hartwell's database
>of 30,000 Chinese individuals is up and running and connected to the CHGIS,
>thus giving options for considering data at the level of individuals, the
>whole of the mapped area of what is now the PRC, and several geographical
>levels and social groupings in between.
>
>There are already several prosopographical databases up and running, which
>Willard knows all about, since most of them are based at CCH! As far as I
>know, however, these don't yet connect to maps/GIS-type presentations.
>
>Naomi Standen
>--
>Dr. Naomi Standen | School of Historical Studies, Armstrong
>Building
>Lecturer in Chinese History | University of Newcastle, NE1 7RU
>Admissions Tutor for History | Tel: +44 191 222 6490 Fax: +44 191 222 6484
> | Homepage:
>www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/naomi.standen
Received on Fri May 13 2005 - 02:10:21 EDT