Creating Metadata for Transcribed Letters

Using standardized vocabularies and formats is what makes metadata most useful. Here at UNH, we are using DublinCore and Library of Congress subject headings as our standards. As I create the metadata for each letter, I am thinking about how the 14th Regiment moved around quite a bit, and it would be great to link the location each letter was written, with geographical links as well as information about that location during the war.

Work and School Intersect

Today I attended a presentation from a team of representatives from Ebsco. Ebsco provides the library with a lot of our databases and electronic materials, as well as providing what is called a discovery service, the front end of what many patrons see in our library.

The most interesting part of the presentation was their section on data and text mining, focusing on how their services offered means for researchers to access data sets for language research. I did not realize that their databases provided that option, and I hope to learn more about it.

Playing with Tools: Word Maps

I had fun playing around in Voyant today, checking various word mapping options. I actually enjoyed using the newer beta version and compared some of the letters of John Henry Jenks with those of William Combs, another solder in the same regiment, whose letters have been digitized and made available by the University of Notre Dame. I played with different options using just the Jenks collection, and noted that the more letters includes, the better and more interesting the results. There's lots more here with which it would be fun to experiment!

Here are some of my results when mapping the entire Jenks collection:

The Writing Process

This differs for everyone, and even for me from research paper to research paper. However, I learn from each experience and recognize a few things that the digital world offers me that I use regularly. In this class in particular, most of the readings are available electronically, so if I don't remember exactly where I read something but I want to refer to it, I can search the computer folder in which I save my readings, mostly in pdf format. I also use RefWorks in which to save and create citations to the materials I use. My internet browser of choice is Google Chrome, which allows me to save my settings across different computers and devices, and has a bookmarking style that works well for me. All of these digital tools were not available to me when I was a grad student for my Master's in Library and Information Science, and certainly not for my undergraduate degree. I use online tools for so many things that make the writing process easier, and in my mind, more secure. My writing is stored on a web storage site, either Dropbox or Box, as well as on my computer's hard drive, which also backs up automatically, daily, to a fee-based online storage company's server. I feel that my information is quite secure, however I sometimes find myself with multiple versions of my writing and have to untangle the evidence to discover which one is the most recent.

Slight repositioning and more background

I probably should state some details of the final class assignment here, so that the blog content makes more sense. We are to consider "best practices" of utilizing new technologies for disseminating, researching, displaying, etc. historical concepts through a proposal or mock-up of a digital history project. My plan is to show how, by using digital history concepts and techniques, one can build a digital educational component around archival materials, in this case letters from a Civil War soldier.

I've been helping on a project engaging college students with the University Special Collections -- they gain exposure to primary sources by transcribing a collection of letters in the collection that were written by Keene, N.H. Civil War soldier John Henry Jenks mostly to his wife. Once transcribed, the transcriptions are reviewed by a graduate student and collected in a shared electronic folder from which I retrieve them. My role has been to create metadata for the records, using standards and best practices, so that they can become discoverable in their final format. At the same time, the original letters are digitized so that they will be published online, along with the metadata I've created for them.

As I read these letters chronologically, I found myself becoming interested in this soldier's story, and followed his geographical journey with interest. This gave me the idea of building a fuller educational component around this project that could be used in many similar projects. The geographical movement lends itself to mapping, the chronology offers a chance to work with timelines, and the letters themselves allow for doing some word visualizations. The subject could be broadened to the whole military unit, allowing for inclusion of more letters and possibly photos or other digital representations. I can imagine using this with modifications for all levels of school, or for a public history website, especially since it's of particular interest to those in or from the Keene, N.H. area.

Lots to think about!

More letters than expected

And today I am finding more information about soldiers from NH 14th Volunteer Infantry online. Here is something about Daniel C. Currier, from Grantham, New Hampshire. UNH has some of his letters in Special Collections, so I plan to spend some time in there looking them over. I also discovered a website that has a variety of Civil War letters that can be searched by state, and the search can be further refined by unit. I found three of Daniel Currier's letters there, already transcribed.

William Combs Letters

I'm excited to have found another collection of digitized letters from a member of the same NH 14th Regiment as W. Henry Jenks. This collection, that of William Combs of Winchester, New Hampshire is held by the University of Notre Dame. I can see that there could be some interesting comparisons made between the two sets of letters, perhaps related to their ranks or roles in the unit, or other possible variables. I'm going to see if there are any other digitized collections available for me to access and continue along this line of inquiry.

A tool that I've used for research in the past is ArchiveGrid, which offers the opportunity to search for primary source materials in a broad range of archives. Libraries and other cultural and historical institutions submit their materials through OCLC, Although not all of the archives searched have their materials available in digital format, it's a great way to see what you can find in your area of interest. I did a search for Civil War letters from New Hampshire's 14th Regiment in the Civil War and found a wide range of material I would not have likely found otherwise. The website is connected to WorldCat, which is an international database of library materials from which many libraries create and/or access records of items in their collections for their catalogs. Although the material I found on ArchiveGrid were not accessible online, it gave me the idea of looking in WorldCat, a database that I am much more experiences in searching, and I was able to find a few photos connected to the 14th Regiment.

This one is a Civil War envelope with the 14th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment emblem, found on the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division website:

Civil War envelope showing emblem of the 14th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment

And here's another photo from the Library of Congress of one of the Regiment's soldiers:

Captain David A. Macurdy of Co. H and Co. B,
14th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment in uniform

And one more:

Unidentified soldier in Union uniform and 14th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment

Mapping Tools -- Dissatisfaction

I'm playing with another tool today, Timetoast, which allows one to create a timeline with dates. I attempted to plug in various dates of movement of the NH 14th Regiment, but found that I was required to have a day of the month, and in most cases I do not. However, I adapted by choosing the first day of any month I used and came up with what is at least a relative timeline. In order to collaborate, I would need a Premium account, which I'm not going to do, but this tool is offering a decent visual for the troops' movements.

Here's a glance at what my rudimentary timeline looks like:

The morning after ... day two.

I started off this Saturday morning wanting to improve upon the map tool that I used from Google. Although I still want to experiment with the power of the Google mapping option (so far I simply have locations on a map and I want to trace the route of the military unit), but I thought I'd look at some other mapping tools I've saved over the course of this semester from my readings.

SimplyMap seemed like a good place to start, however I quickly learned that my institution, the University of New Hampshire, did not have a subscription and therefore it did not offer me an option to use it.

It's hard not to get excited about all of the mapping tools, and as I've learned over the course of the semester, one of the downsides of digital research and reading is the all-too-easy opportunity to get side-tracked. Actually, I'm not really getting sidetracked so much as I am getting a case of information overload. I currently have two Chrome browser windows open, with a total of 37 tabs open, so it's both a matter of disorganization, and lack of ready access to what I might need. However, these mapping options offer so many springboards to other sites that it's hard to contain the feeling of "I'll get back to this one later."

I found my way to ARCgis.com, where after creating a quick, free account, I was able to create a similar map with the locations on the 14th Infantry's route, much as I did on my Google Map attempt. I hope to see which of these will provide me with a better method to show the journey taken, or, if I will find myself using another resource for that part of my project. I got excited about the possibility of using Neatline, but discovered that I would need to have an Omeka.org account, which requires a host server, and I only have an Omeka hosted account. I may use the limited account for some display options, but it looks like the mapping will need to be done on another platform. While exploring the web for alternatives, I learn that I am not the only student limited by my institution's lack of support for such a project. I expect that going forward these tools will become part of any Digital Scholarship program the University develops.

I was doing some advance reading for this class today, and came across some information that is relevant to this project. First, a chapter in Writing History in the Digital Age by Kristen Nawrotski and Jack Dougherty titled "Toward Teaching the Introductory History Course, Digitally," talked about students using a blog to aid in their introductory history course. One student claimed that he didn't like it, because "it keeps the class always on my mind" (Nawrotski and Dougherty) and I realize that is what is happening to me, in a good way! Another thought that I got from Part 3 of that book is an idea to add content to the Wikipedia entry for the NH 14th Regiment Wikipedia entry for the 14th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry (which I was surprised to find existed). I signed up to get permissions from Wikipedia to do so, and was quickly able to add information about the death of J. Henry Jenks, as well as adding an additional resource to the "Further Reading" section of the page. I must admit that I do feel a bit empowered!

I'm excited about starting my final project for my Digital History class. Since I am already working on a project at the University of New Hampshire involving civil war letters from a member of the New Hampshire 14th Volunteer Regiment, I thought I might enhance that with added digital components. This blog will serve as a document of the tools with which I experiment, and what works and what doesn't. It will also serve as a stream of consciousness for me as I embark on this effort to bring to life the letters of John Henry Jenks.

I've done some searching today for more information about the 14th Volunteer Regiment from Keene, and was lucky to find a digital version of volume 3 of the Granite Monthly, published in 1880, that has a short section on the 14th Regiment and notes J. Henry Jenks' death in 1864. Because this volume has been digitized by UNH, I was able to find and access this immediately, rather than wait until Monday when I could look at the physical copy in the library.

http://www.library.unh.edu/digital/object/granite:0003

I also plotted the known locations of the regiment using some Google Maps tools that allowed me to see how far they travelled. I hope to refine this as time goes on.