Critique on Addressing History

Addressing History is based on Edinburgh’s geographical past, by post directories being amalgamated on historical maps. It is part of a JISC project founded by EDINA alongside the National Library of Scotland (NLS). It contains a blog and presents links to networks such as Twitter and YouTube, showing conferences and instructional videos. The website has a simple layout and easy navigation in accessing data. The homepage is presented professionally for academics and local historians, yet inviting for the public due to the information being displayed coherently.  

Addressing History uses primary source material from three post office directories (POD’s), the Alexander Kincaid 1784, the Bartholomew Post office 1865, and Johnston Post office plan 1905. The POD tick boxes above the map indicate the scale of each directory, thereby limiting searches such as place, people and occupations to these areas in Edinburgh. On the other hand, data capture of POD’s are more advanced and completed through a scanning process with two high digital cameras.  It is checked before being processed through OCR, and then standardised to be published online.  However, OCR is a low standard system which reduces image quality and therefore allows errors to occur, especially during textual data searches. Nevertheless, the website uses a truncated search where the first three letters of the word are detected in the directory index therefore distorting the accuracy in results, for example a search for ‘William’ may also identify results as ‘Williamson.’ Accuracy in other areas for instance, mapping results are difficult to judge without direct access to the primary records. Nonetheless, the directories scaled on the map are detailed until magnified to the highest extent, where basic outlines of roads and fields are displayed.  

Moreover, Addressing History abides by the 2.0 principles, thus allowing the public to access data as well as altering it. The public have to register in order to geo-reference information, which sends algorithms through Geo-Parser in identifying them. This may be a hindrance to historians as geo-locations are not confirmed but are rated out of five for degree of accuracy. Interestingly, the website can be used in conjunction with other mediums of technology such as an Application Programming Interfaces (API), this is applicable to other technologies and enables crowd sourcing as well as using data for ‘Mashups’ and other websites, known as the middleware service. Another brilliant aspect of API is that it permits interfacing and thus gives the public information whilst being at the location. Downloaded data can be presented in a JSON format for other websites, a KML format to use in sites such as Google Earth and basic TXT format. These are alternative versions of XML, which are useful to historians in assisting with research on other websites.

 Addressing History could be developed further by broadening their resources to affiliate the whole of Scotland, subsequently historians could access the majority of the information needed in one place. This implies a necessity for further amendments and developments. The project functioned from April to September 2010 as it did not receive the funding required. Despite this Addressing History has accomplished a great deal and is an invaluable resource.

A Digital History Wordle

Before learning about what a Wordle was, I had seen this type of image previously in galleries and thought of it as an interesting piece of modern art work. However, I recently found out that this was generated by textual data. Like graphs and charts, a Wordle format is used to display information in an easy accessible way for people to interpret.

I used the aims listed on the 'Digital Histories' homepage of Studynet to construct my first ever Wordle. It was extremely quick and easy to do. What I gathered from this is that words such as 'Historical,' 'Online' and 'Primary' are regularly used. Also for someone who had no knowledge of the content, at first glance they would be able to see what the text was predominantly about.

However, in my opinion there are many flaws which would render this unusable for analysis.

1. The layout may be striking but all the more confusing. There is no methodology in the placement of words.

2. The wordle is pretty to look at but would benefit more from a interactive element like displayed on Gapminder. Rather than showing how something progressed over time, It could demonstrate the usage of common words within the text for example, most common words could move from the cluster into the middle and followed by the wordsless used often with words mentioned once or twice displayed in the smallest font. There are other ways in which that can be shown using movement, nevertheless interaction further engages the person looking at it.
  

3. The words enlarged are of those which that have appeared a number of times. Even though this is useful to some extent, I would rather the most important words or key terms relating to the subject appear larger.

4. If not the size of the words, at least there could be a colour coded system demonstrating both the most important and the most used word. Moreover, a shade of colour depicting a certain word could be used. Instead the Wordle displays colour schemes complementing the variety of layouts.

I still stand by my original concept of a Wordle being more acceptable as a piece of art work.
Consequently, the site from where I created the Wordle stated that, 'The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends,' indicating it as a social and fun activity rather than an analysis of text.