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By Sherwood

In his blog post “Reading digital sources: a case study in ship’s logs,” historian Ben Schmidt struggles with something of an existential question, regarding how to conduct historical analysis in the 21st century. He argues that the interpretive work of history remains relevant, but admits that the data historians have previously worked with has been digitized. However, although this shift towards a new medium demands historians change up their traditional methodology, Schmidt seems excited about the future of the field. He concludes that neither “humanistic competency or technical expertise from the sciences” are adequate for “humanistic readings of digital data.”

To corroborate his argument, Schmidt offers an example.

Consider the “millions of points” in a “medium-sized data set like Maury’s 19th century [ship] logs.” Schmidt’s goal is simply to interpret large sets of data at once, like this one, which he calls ‘reading’ them. He suggests that major trends become immediately apparent when data is represented visually. Digital tools make data visualization possible and easy.

He introduces a pair of maps that also serve as dynamic representations of early American shipping and the global whaling industry, respectively. Colored dots, representing ships, travel to and from major ports around the world. The most popular routes are dense with traffic, leading between England and the American seaboard, around the cape of Africa and below South America. During the summer months, the northern Pacific becomes flush with color, but in the winter, these ships migrate south. This phenomenon was similar to what Cordelia observed in her map, when “the California Gold Rush [was] suddenly visible, as [was] the great Mormon migration to Utah.” The true purpose of Schmidt’s maps, like the ones Cordelia analyzed, was “the ability to view historical events as they happened.” Also, Hawaii and the Galapagos were apparently popular pit stops.

Schmidt argues that this example, which makes apparent a wealth of information after only a few seconds, demonstrates strength of visualizations over other methods of understanding data.

Earlier on, I called these both maps and “dynamic representations.” However, if one considers the principal purpose of maps, which is to convey geographical information, they are more the latter than the former. The main focus of these tools is the data – patterns of ship routes around the world – not the geography.