The Migrant Letter Digitised: Visualising Metadata

https://openmethods.dariah.eu/2017/11/10/the-migrant-letter-digitised-visualising-metadata-ca-journal-of-cultural-analytics/ OpenMethods introduction to: The Migrant Letter Digitised: Visualising Metadata 2017-11-10 09:32:18 Introduction: The article discusses how letters are being used across the disciplines, identifying similarities and differences in transcription, digitisation and annotation practices. It is based on a workshop held after the end of the project Digitising experiences of migration: the development of interconnected letters collections (DEM). The aims were to examine issues and challenges surrounding digitisation, build capacity relating to correspondence mark-up, and initiate the process of interconnecting resources to encourage cross-disciplinary research. Subsequent to the DEM project, TEI templates were developed for capturing information within and about migrant correspondence, and visualisation tools were trialled with metadata from a sample of letter collections. Additionally, as a demonstration of how the project's outputs could be repurposed and expanded, the correspondence metadata that was collected for DEM was added to a more general correspondence project, Visual Correspondence. Helen Katsiadakis http://culturalanalytics.org/2017/03/the-migrant-letter-digitised-visualising-metadata/ Blog post Analysis Annotating Browsing Capture Collaboration Content Analysis Data Data Recognition Dissemination Encoding English Enrichment File Gathering Georeferencing Information Retrieval Language Link Map Metadata Methods Migration Named Entities Network Analysis Persons Projects Research Activities Research Objects Research Techniques Software Spatial Analysis Text Tools Transcription Visualization via bookmarklet

Introduction by OpenMethods Editor (Helen Katsiadakis): The article discusses how letters are being used across the disciplines, identifying similarities and differences in transcription, digitisation and annotation practices. It is based on a workshop held after the end of the project Digitising experiences of migration: the development of interconnected letters collections (DEM). The aims were to examine issues and challenges surrounding digitisation, build capacity relating to correspondence mark-up, and initiate the process of interconnecting resources to encourage cross-disciplinary research. Subsequent to the DEM project, TEI templates were developed for capturing information within and about migrant correspondence, and visualisation tools were trialled with metadata from a sample of letter collections. Additionally, as a demonstration of how the project’s outputs could be repurposed and expanded, the correspondence metadata that was collected for DEM was added to a more general correspondence project, Visual Correspondence.

This article builds on workshop discussions that took place as part of an AHRC funded research networking project. The project, Digitising experiences of migration: the development of interconnected letters collections (DEM), started in April 2013 and finished in July 2014. Through a series of workshops, the project brought together scholars from different disciplines currently working with migrant letters as a primary data source, to explore the digital potential of these perhaps iconic documents. The workshops looked at how letters are being used across the disciplines, identifying similarities and differences in transcription, digitisation and annotation practices. The aims were to examine issues and challenges surrounding digitisation, build capacity relating to correspondence mark-up, and initiate the process of interconnecting resources to encourage cross-disciplinary research. Subsequent to the DEM project, TEI templates were developed for capturing information within and about migrant correspondence, and visualisation tools were trialled with metadata from a sample of letter collections. Additionally, as a demonstration of how the project’s outputs could be repurposed and expanded, the correspondence metadata that was collected for DEM was added to a more general correspondence project, Visual Correspondence. This article reports on some of this subsequent work. It will discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of interconnecting correspondence collections and how visualisation tools may be used to explore the metadata of letters. While many of the lessons learnt apply to correspondence in general, the emphasis is on the migrant letter.

 

Original publication date: 28/03/2017.

Source: The Migrant Letter Digitised: Visualising Metadata « CA: Journal of Cultural Analytics