The New Archive Archives

Digital Visualization Workshop, Venice 2014: The New Archive (No. 17)

Over the summer, I spent two weeks in Venice participating in a digital history workshop organized by Duke University and Venice International University. The objective of the workshop was to introduce participants to a variety of digital tools for historical research and presentation. The participants came from disciplines such as art history, history, archeology, architecture history and information science. We learned the basic features of different software, mostly open source, in hands-on sessions.

Island of Burano, Venice Lagoon

Once we became familiar with the history of Venice and its geography, we started to work hands-on with various digital programs. We used QGIS to make maps and overlay historical maps on locations in physical space. Another tool that we used was Neatline to create exhibits linking images, maps, and timelines. With SketchUp we produced 3D representations of objects. Lastly, we used Google Earth Pro to record a tour inside a 3D map and produce video files. We also learned the basics of blog and website development, and video editing.

We worked in groups to create a digital-historical narrative of a theme of our own choice related to the topic of the workshop: The Venice Lagoon. I worked with an art historian and an archeologist to produce a narrative about the fortification system of the Venice Lagoon. We produced a video and a timeline exhibition using some of the tools that we learned. You can see them here.

View of Venice From La Guidecca

I would like to recommend two of the tools that we used during the workshop and end with a short reflection about what I believe are pertinent questions to ask when considering going digital.

Geo-Referencing Historical Maps

In the first sessions, we learned to overlay historical maps on contemporary maps by geo-referencing them with a free software program called QGIS. Geo-referencing means to assign real world coordinates to old maps. Geo-referencing historical maps can help historians visualize, interpret, retrieve and compare geographic and spatial information. On this webpage of the National Library of Scotland, there are some relevant points to take into consideration about the uses, limits and possibilities of geo-rectifying maps. For example, a possibility is to compare historical maps from cities in different points of time and compare them to present-day satellite images. Also, geo-referencing allows integration of early maps with other topographical information such as height. In some cases one should be cautious of the possible distortions that geo-referencing can cause to historical maps that do not fit contemporary maps with geometrical accuracy. Here you can see a geo-referencing exercise that I made using QGIS with map of the viceroyalty of New Granada—contemporary Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. I marked six points in the historical map and then matched them with points in the real map. For a step-by-step tutorial for georeferencing using QGIS click here.

Creating a geo-reference map.

Image of historical map geo-referenced on top of present day map.

A Geotemporal Interface

If you are trying to figure out a way to interactively visualize and narrate historical transformations, a geotemporal interface can be helpful. In the workshop, we learned about geotemporal storytelling using Neatline. Created by the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia, Neatline expands the functionality of Omeka, which is a content management system. Neatline offers the possibility to create a story through an interface that connects a timeline to a map. You can georectify a historical map with QGIS and then place it on top of the default OpenStreet or Google Map to create an exhibition. Then you can start adding objects (events, photos, documents) to link to the map. The interactivity features include a “Neatline-enhanced edition of text documents.” It works by connecting paragraphs, sentences, and words of your own writings with objects in the exhibit. A fascinating example is the project Mapping the Catalogue of Ships which analyzes Homer’s natural geography of Greece through a map of the itineraries of Book Two of the Iliad. The exhibit links the contingents in the Greek army with locations in the map. For more about this feature you can read about Neatline-text here.

Mac Lab at Venice International University. Venice Visualization Workshop, June 2014.

After my experience in Venice, there are some things that I would recommend for those interested in engaging with digital tools. First, consider how a digital component could enhance your research and teaching.

Do you want to incorporate digital tools to curate your own archival material and maybe then turn it into an online exhibition?
Do you want to create public history contents to circulate in social media?
Do you want to engage digital tools for teaching and as a resource for working in the classroom?
Do you want to visualize your archival research differently to see if you can come up with new research questions?
Do you want to use digital tools to visualize a historical transformation that is not easily discernable in the written text?

Secondly, learning new tools always takes time, and archival work and writing consumes most of our time. However, the Venice workshop helped me realize that I can learn to use software that at first might seem too challenging. If you are seriously considering using digital tools for your work, you should be open to experiment and learn the basics about the tools you want to engage with. I would add that ideally, as it has been happening across the world, we should aim for collaborative work among humanists, computer scientists, graphic designers, and digital humanists. For now, there are lots of open source and user-friendly digital tools to experiment with.

Catch up on the latest from the New Archive series:

Charley Binkow discussed digitalized images from the Folger Shakespeare Library

Charley Binkow explored photographs of California’s Gold Rush

Henry Wiencek found a digital history project that not only preserves the past, but recreates it

All images courtesy of Maria José Afanador-Llach

“Oh this learning, what a thing it is!”: The New Archive (No. 16)

By Charley S. Binkow

Has any single author had as massive an impact on history as William Shakespeare? For over four centuries, the works of the Bard have been read, analyzed, and performed all around the world. Keeping track of that massive history, let alone the history of Elizabethan/Jacobian England, is a monumental ambition. Luckily, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., has taken up the task. And even better: they’ve digitized their collection for the world to see.

Title page of the First Folio, by William Shakespeare, with copper engraving of the author by Martin Droeshout. Image courtesy of the Elizabethan Club and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Title page of the First Folio, by William Shakespeare, 1623.

This extensive online collection has over 80,000 digital images. There are manuscripts, flyers, posters, books, papers, costumes, theater memorabilia, art pieces and a lot more. The behemoth archive is broken up easily into three sections: What, When, Where, and Who. Historians interested in letters of Francis Bacon or religious ceremonies of the 17^th century (like these marriage sermons), only have to click a few buttons to find what they’re looking for. Just browsing the topics will intrigue most anyone. Some fascinating things I stumbled upon include a picture of a Japanese Hamlet from 1905, Edwin Booth’s Iago and Richard III costumes, and a German graphic of The Merchant Venice from the 19^th century.

Photographic full-length portrait of Edwin Booth as Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice, c. 1870 (Via Wikimedia Commons)

Historians, theater enthusiasts, and Shakespeare lovers will get a lot out of this collection. Historians can get primary documents showing Shakespeare’s influence all over the globe, they can read the documents of his time, and peruse four centuries of art in high definition (seriously, zoom all the way in and get up close to the cross-hatches). Any one studying anything even tangentially related to Shakespeare’s age can find something useful in this collection, like this early map of Cuba from the 16^th century or this Italy travel guide.

This is an amazing collection of historical images. Follow our links, or just jump into it and get lost among the artifacts. The love of Shakespeare is infectious; seeing the thousands of items associated with Shakespeare, compiled by people who love him and his era, will make you want to open a new tab in the Folger site and start reading the complete works.

Catch up on the latest from the New Archive series:

Charley Binkow explored photographs of California’s Gold Rush

Henry Wiencek found a digital history project that not only preserves the past, but recreates it

And Charley Binkow perused some incredible photographs of Egypt snapped by European travelers

First image courtesy of the Elizabethan Club and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

Seeing John Donne Speak: The New Archive (No. 14)

By Henry Wiencek

Ever wish you were actually there to experience a moment in history? What would it have been like to witness British soldiers marching into Concord? Or to hear the German bombers flying over London? The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project believes it can provide that very sensation—or at least approximate it. A group of historians, architects, and sound experts collaborated to digitally reconstruct the sights and sounds of a unique historical moment: London’s St Paul’s Cathedral on November 5, 1622, the 17^th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot by English Catholics to blow up Parliament. Through the power of computer technology, we are present as John Donne—one of England’s most renowned poetic voices—commemorates this traumatic event with a sermon paying tribute to God and King James I.

John Gipkin’s “Painting of Paul’s Cross,” 1616 (the Bridgeman Art Library, New York, and the Society of Antiquaries, London)

The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project starts by digitally recreating St Paul’s Cathedral as it appeared in late 1622. According to one contemporary account quoted on the site, this was a place of great religious, civil, and social importance: a public space where “principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions” converged. With the help of Google SketchUp, engineers were able to generate a 360-degree model of that very churchyard, its Romanesque cathedral, and the buildings surrounding it. But it does far more than just depict the physical space—it captures a particular moment in time. You can see the late fall’s dim light and low sun, the smoke rings filling the air from nearby chimneys, even the black birds circling overhead. What emerges is a detailed portrait of the space, the people present, and all the other bits of daily minutia so often lost to historians, yet so critical to shaping the feel of living in a place.

A digital rendering of St. Paul’s courtyard in 1622. (The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project)

The site takes primary accounts of Donne’s speech, the crowd, and even the weather conditions of that November morning and brings them back to life. Users can actually watch computer generated reenactments of the speech—digital renderings of what scholars believe it looked like and sounded like to be in that churchyard as John Donne spoke. In order to faithfully reconstruct the crowd’s auditory experience, sound engineers considered a variety of factors, ranging from Donne’s speaking ability to the acoustic reverberations adjacent buildings likely produced. The reenactments even incorporate a variety of “pre-industrial” sounds that would have been echoing around the London churchyard in 1622. As Donne speaks, you can hear dogs barking, horses trotting, and workmen banging hammers.

Isaac Oliver’s contemporary painting of John Donne (National Portrait Gallery, London: NPG 1849)

The site includes not one, but a variety of video clips, each capturing how the sermon would have sounded from different vantage points. Class differences are even registered. While the distinguished guests sitting above in Sermon House would have clearly received the speech as it echoed through the house walls, more ordinary Londoners at ground level would have heard ambient street noise, chattering people, and crowing animals competing with Donne’s fainter, more distant words. Users discover that the listener’s unique position—both in terms of geography and social rank—created a unique aural experience.

Recreation of Donne’s speech as seen from the Sermon House (The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project)

The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project transforms the text of a speech into a dynamic performance of religious, political, and social meaning. Users can approximate the experience of history unfolding in real time by using more of their senses: listening and looking, and locating themselves in a virtual space. By reenacting the varied sounds of November 5, 1622, this multi-sensory project illuminates the varied social experience of seventeenth-century England. Despite the pageantry and ceremony surrounding it, Donne’s sermon was nothing more than background noise or a few snatched phrases to many ordinary Londoners. The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project elegantly reminds us that there is no one way to hear, see or understand a historical event. It all depends on where you’re sitting.

Watch a portion of the reconstructed sermon from the courtyard:

Or watch it from the Sermon House:

Catch up on the latest from the New Archive:

Victorian tourists exploring the people and places of Egypt

And a website that lets users hear 1920s New York City

Hungary 1956. Crimea 2014? The New Archive (No. 7)

By Charley S. Binkow

With Russian troops on the ground in Crimea, Ukraine, it’s tempting to see parallels with Soviet invasions of the past. As the unique and pressing situation in the Ukraine develops, can historians look to history for guidance? Central European University’s Open Society Archives gives us a window into a similar invasion in Hungary in 1956.

And while the Hungarian Revolution isn’t necessarily the same as the situation in the Crimea, it can help us ask some important questions: Are Russian interests today different from Soviet interests of the past? What makes Putin different from Khrushchev or Brezhnev? While the origins of the incursions were different, both countries were invaded by a government in Moscow seeking to cement its sphere of influence. The OSA archives can help us dissect the Hungarian revolt to better understand the struggle of the Ukrainian people today.

“Moscow promises total independence to its satellites”

With hundreds of primary documents, news sources, and historical overviews, the archive offers an expansive and in-depth look at the Hungarian struggle. There are several collections from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that offer background reports, newspaper and television excerpts, and various selected documents all germane to the revolt. You can read articles from The Guardian, memorandums about Hungarian secret prisons, reports from the Associated Press detailing the state of Hungarian refugees, and much more. Articles and videos in half a dozen languages give us a perspective into the international attention that the uprising received. One German magazine asks: “Wer will das alles Verantworten?” (“Who will be responsible for all this?”)

The site also strikes a personal tone. Columbia University’s Research Project Hungary (CURPH) has digitized its impressive collection of interviews. These transcripts (written in English) catalogue the lives of hundreds of Hungarian refugees and their stories from 1956. The catalogue is easy to search and is well worth perusing.

Historians and history lovers can get a lot out of this collection. The site’s size and navigability reward exploration; rarely does one find an uninteresting document.

You may also like earlier reviews from The New Archive:

Henry Wiencek on “Sound Maps”

Charley Binkow on Black History sources on iTunesU

Sound Maps: The New Archive (No. 6)

By Henry Wiencek

In the study of history, it’s easy to fall back on national identities: “Irish music,” an “English accent,” “American Exceptionalism” are just a few examples. But a closer examination of the local cultures—music, dialects, history—that exist within nations demonstrates how misleading those generalizations can be. Just look through one of the British Library’s “Sound Maps” and you’ll be convinced. This remarkable site takes many of the library’s 50,000 recordings of music, regional accents, and oral histories and arranges them geographically on Google Maps. The project is at once global and local—each sound map is an aural window into a unique part of the world. You can hear birds chirping in Algarve, Portugal, a folksinger perform in Carlistrane, Ireland, or the local dialect in Morton, Mississippi.

One of the most fascinating—and addictive—features on the site is “Your Accents,” a global map of the world’s seemingly endless variety of dialects. The map features recordings of people from across the globe reading the same English phrases, allowing listeners to discern how each locality articulates “scone,” “garage” and “schedule” among other richly pronounceable words. The most immediate differences are apparent along national lines, as English, Indian, American, and various other accents contour the words in unique ways. But the map goes even deeper—revealing the astonishing regional differences that exist within those nations. Although people from Brighton and Leeds ostensibly share an “English” accent, the sonic differences between them are vast.

Other sound maps use the same technology to tell far more sobering stories. “Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust” archives oral histories of that traumatic epoch. Again using Google Maps, the page arranges survival stories based on geographic origins: individuals from France, England, Germany, Poland and even Azerbaijan are all represented. These unique and deeply affecting histories underscore the striking heterogeneity of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors. They were rich and poor; came from big cities and small towns; and identified as religiously devout and irreligious. By mapping their oral histories, the British Library visually captures that geographic and experiential diversity. And by letting them speak, reinforces the kinds of variations that get flattened out or even erased when reading text on a page.

The British Library’s “Sound Maps” is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in hearing what the world sounds like. Cultural historians and preservationists will take particular interest in the collections of music and dialects—time capsules of old folkways quietly vanishing in a globalizing world. Readers may note the site’s emphasis on English speaking regions, especially the UK, but the geographic breadth of its collection remains deeply impressive. These maps do not just capture the sounds of the world, they capture its most compelling minutiae: the small town pubs, the remote jungles, and the fascinating people.

Explore the latest finds in the NEW ARCHIVE:

Charley Binkow on iTunes’s salute to Black History Month

And Henry Wiencek finds a new way of looking at Emancipation

Photo Credits:

Screenshot from “Your Accents” sound map (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Screenshot from “Jewish Survivors Of The Holocaust” sound map (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Quebecois lumbermen making music with a violin and sticks, 1943 (Image courtesy of National Film Board of Canada)

History Made Magic: The Scrapbooks of Harry Houdini Come Alive

By Charley S. Binkow

THE NEW ARCHIVE (No.3) Computer and online technologies are enabling historians to do history in a variety of new ways. Archives and libraries all over the world are digitizing their collections, making their documents available to anyone with a computer. Mapping and other kinds of visualization are allowing historians to create new kinds of documents and ask new questions about history. Each week, our Assistant Editors, UT History PhD student Henry Wiencek and Undergraduate Editorial Intern Charley Binkow, will introduce our readers to the world’s most interesting new digital documents and projects in THE NEW ARCHIVE.

In a new age of digital powered skepticism, where anything “extraordinary” can be explained within seconds on a smartphone, there isn’t much room for magic. But the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin has brought us back to a time when the mystical unknown captured the hearts and minds of people everywhere. The HRC acquired the scrapbooks of legendary magician Harry Houdini (1891-1926) in 1958 and has recently digitized its collection for the public. The collection contains ten scrapbooks filled with advertisements, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, reports, how-to articles, and almost everything else regarding magic from roughly the 1830s through the 1920s. Houdini owned all the books at the time of his death, but he did not compile all of the clippings. Four books were owned by his contemporaries, including Harry Helms, Herr Jansen, S.S. Baldwin, and Professeur Em. De Verli (sic) and their books have clippings that span Europe and North America throughout the 19th century. Some scraps detail the “Revival of the Dread Devil-Worship,” while others document articles, such as “Houdini Tells How the Mediums Know So Much.”

One of the best features of the collection, besides its size, is its display. If you click on “Page Flip View,” the scrapbook will appear on screen and let you flip through the collection, page by page. You feel as if you’re flipping through the scrapbooks themselves. My personal favorite piece (located on page 35 of the “Disbound/Divided” scrapbook) is an article from Science and Invention magazine from July 1923. The article is titled “Magic For Everybody,” and includes such classic tricks as “The Vanishing Handkerchief” and “The Vanishing Horse.” This collection gives us a comprehensive understanding of what these magicians thought valuable; everything they saw as important or nostalgic or innovative they preserved in these books. We can track their love of magic across a century and see the dynamic ways in which the field changed, in many instances by the collectors themselves. Almost every page of this collection bleeds an infectious love for the world of the supernatural and is well worth exploring.

If you like the Houdini archive, you should also check out the HRC’s other digital collection of “Magic Posters and Playbills,” which contains a visual history of magic spanning from 1750 to 1920.

More finds in THE NEW ARCHIVE:

Henry Wiencek finds a digital history project that literally maps where and when slavery ended in America.

And Charley Binknow scrolls through some incredible photographs, letters and government documents from the Easter Rising of 1916.

Photo Credits:

Poster for “Will, The Witch, and the Watch” (Harry Houdini Papers and Magic Collection, Harry Ransom Center)

Magic show advertisement from “Magician’s Scrapbook,” Houdini’s collection of newspaper clippings, playbills, and other assorted material (Harry Houdini Papers and Magic Collection, Harry Ransom Center)

Page from “Magician’s Doings,” a scrapbook created by magician Harry August Jansen then acquired by Houdini. (Harry Houdini Papers and Magic Collection, Harry Ransom Center)

Visualizing Emancipation(s): Mapping The End of Slavery in America

by Henry Wiencek

THE NEW ARCHIVE (No.2)

Computer and online technologies are enabling historians to do history in a variety of new ways. Archives and libraries all over the world are digitizing their collections, making their documents available to anyone with a computer. Mapping and other kinds of visualization are allowing historians to create new kinds of documents and ask new questions about history. Each week, our Assistant Editors, UT History PhD student, Henry Wiencek and Undergraduate Editorial Intern, Charley Binkow, will introduce our readers to the world’s most interesting new digital documents and projects in THE NEW ARCHIVE.

How did slavery end in America? It’s a deceptively simple question—but it holds a very complicated answer. “Visualizing Emancipation” is a new digital project from the University of Richmond that maps the messy, regionally dispersed and violent process of ending slavery in America.

Using a map of the United States, the site visually charts the precise time and place of “emancipation events” that appeared in newspaper accounts, books, personal papers or official records between 1861 and 1865. Click on any of the red dots scattered across the map and you get a small snapshot of emancipation as a historical process: blacks in Culpeper, Virginia assisting Union troops on July 19, 1862; confederate troops forcibly conscripting blacks in Yazoo City, MS on September 27, 1863; an enslaved man named Wm. P. Rucker escaping in Pittsylvania County, VA on October 27, 1863. And alongside the red dots of “emancipation events,” blue dots illustrate the changing positions of Union troops, a clever overlay of social and military history. Move the time frame backwards or forwards and an entirely new set of “events” appears, coordinated spatially with the movements of troops.

This exciting new project aims to be an online resource to educators looking for a unique means of teaching the end of slavery. The site also hosts an impressive archive of more traditional primary documents users can easily access for lesson plans and further reading.

“Visualizing Emancipation” changes the story of emancipation from one singular turning point—Lincoln’s proclamation—to thousands. Its scattered and chaotic map connects small, often seemingly futile, acts of local resistance into a compelling visual depiction of the multiple and diverse acts that marked the end of slavery in America. Moreover, the defeats for rebelling slaves or Union troops that appear here make another crucial point: emancipation was never inevitable—it had to be earned through the blood and sweat of individual soldiers, slaves, freedmen, and countless others. “Visualizing Emancipation” artfully illustrates that and allows us to see their stories in new ways.

And don’t miss Charley Binkow’s piece on a new digital archive dedicated to Ireland’s Easter Rising

Photo Credits:

Recently freed slave children, possibly photographed by Matthew Brady, circa 1870 (Image courtesy of AP Photo)

Screen shot of “Visualizing Emancipation”

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