Data & Digitization: American Panorama

Chapters two and three expounded such topics as data collection, methods of classification, bias, ethical considerations, and creating a medium through which to present over the internet including concepts that one should be familiar with if they are to create a DH project.

The way data are collected and the process by which they are sorted and either discarded or retained should follow from calculated thought that seeks to protect what the data define. A digital humanities project, like research, should take utmost care in treating its data’s referents.

As a creator, you define what a data point is, how it will be organized with others, and what possible data points not to mention, that may be related. Once your data is collected and organized, you present it. To whom you present and how both determine your course of action – which platform, modality, and the exact amount of information.

Potential questions to ask about your presentation choices might be: “Are these choices good for the long term? How satisfactory is this presentation for the average person in fulfilling needs, and is it also accessible to people with specific needs? Can other people freely use this information, and have I controlled for the factors that may complicate privacy issues when sharing?

Here I take a preliminary look at the project I’ll be analyzing, indeed quite a comprehensive one, the "American Panorama" project by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. This project is centered around maps modeling data with historical significance in the US.

The most overt digitization is the representation of pre-internet data such as photos, sums of money, locations, dates, distances, displacements, etc. The project seeks to tell U.S. history with the aid of maps, and it succeeds because of using thorough techniques of presenting analysis paired with texts telling the story of the various visualizations, like the interactive map and accompanying scrollable text on the right in this photo.

The site is also easily navigable, interesting to look at, and up to date. Moreover, the sources of funding for this project bring me to presume that privacy matters were just in its making. The comprehensive ten maps of this project aside, the creators are looking to add more, and have linked another work of theirs – The Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States – within the site.