This week of class has emphasized the processes used to create Digital Humanities projects and understanding the steps required to put a DH project together. Today, I plan on working to deconstruct the Georgetown Slavery Archive, an entire website dedicated to displaying evidence of slavery within Georgetown University’s history. The website has multiple, fascinating components, but I am most interested in their interactive map, as it is similar to some of the work that we have seen in class. The video assigned for us to watch, by Miram Posner, outlined that within each DH project, there are usually three components that went into the creation of that project. These three components can be shortened to be understood as sources, processed, and presented. These three elements of a DH project, as outlined by Posner, are how I will proceed to deconstruct the Slavery Archive’s Interactive Map.
Sources
One aspect of the Slavery Archive that is quite a convent, is that they list their sources directly on the map. Each of their sources is primary sources that include documentation on the deaths of enslaved peoples, transcripts of pro-slavery speeches, and written letters from an enslaved person. There are over 400 of these primary sources, and each place on a map links to these sources, so the website is very transparent about where they are getting their information from. The next step for them, after finding these sources, would be to translate the information into a way that a computer could understand it.
Processed
In order to make the data able to be read by a computer, they probably used the addresses or locations from their primary sources and turned them into coordinates that a computer could understand. They also would have had to read and transcribe each of these documents so that they could be displayed on their website.
Presented
Because they chose to present their project as a map, they probably used the coordinates of each of the locations and transferred them into a spreadsheet. They then could have used something like ArcGIS to put those coordinates on a map and connect links to each of those coordinates as well. Overall, very impressive and informative project.
