The Livingstone Online is a massive digital collection of resources regarding the famous Victorian explorer and missionary David Livingstone. This was an enormous project that unfolded over many years, collected both manuscripts and images, and involved over 40 contributing institutions. The site at times refers to itself as a “digital museum and library”, an “archival resource”, and a “critical edition” of his manuscripts. Can it be all of them? Are those terms mutually exclusive? I think not, which is why I prefer the terms “cultural heritage institution” or “digital collection.”
The most innovative and exciting part of the website is the spectral imaging project. During his 1871 expedition, Livingstone had run out of paper and ink and was forced to write his diary on old newspaper using homemade inks. The field diary was the basis for his Unyanyembe Journal (1872) and Last Journals (1874). The original field diary, badly deteriorated and virtually illegible, was rediscovered in 2009. Researchers at UCLA conducted a spectral imaging analysis of the field diary and revealed the faded writing. The project offers a critical comparison of the three versions.1 The 1871 field diary revealed additional information about a massacre by slave traders that is left out of later editions. In particular, the later editions had deleted passages about the potential involvement in the massacre of Livingstone’s own entourage and his failure to intervene, raising new questions about his reputation. The field diary also provides tangible evidence of the hardships Livingstone suffered that the printed editions cannot.
The spectral imaging project is a wonderful example of inter-disciplinary scholarship. The image scientists were able to digitize the manuscript using several wavelengths across the light spectrum to examine details not visible to the naked eye. The process created over 3,000 raw image files for 202 manuscript sheets. Another set of scientists analyzed the composition of the inks used by Livingstone. Historians analyzed the resulting text and created the critical comparative edition highlighting the omitted sections. The scientific work is published and available on the site, along with the manuscripts and transcriptions.
Side-by-side images and transcripts in the viewer make checking the transcript simple. The file sizes are large, however, and load time is slow. All of the raw .tiff images are available for download, along with the metadata. The images also include a ruler and color card for viewer to better evaluate size and color. The transcripts are fully encoded in XML, using the TEI-compliant Relaxed NG schema, making it machine-readable. There is thorough documentation on the spectral imaging process and the data processing.
The project also presents interesting questions about materiality. Spectral imaging is unlike a typical archival digitization process. The process is used to extract illegible texts or images, rather than to present an accurate digital rendering of what is visible to the naked eye. It also overtly privileges certain information – extracting content at the expense of color, texture, and materiality of the source manuscript. And in the case of the 1871 field diary, the process overtly favored Livingstone’s handwriting over the newspaper print obscured by it. Nonetheless, the spectral imaging analysis means less need for researchers to have access to the original.
I would like to applaud the project managers for the depth of the documentation regarding methods, work flow, data standards, and technical specifications of the digitization process. It provides such details as the project’s objectives, the code of conduct of the project staff, the design decisions, the metadata schema, and the sustainability plan. Very few, if any, projects are this transparent and it provides an excellent roadmap for future projects. The project also specifically included librarians, IT staff, and digital humanists among its target audience as evidenced by the details about the project methodology. More DH should do this.
The site is intended for a general audience, educators and students, and scholars. It has an attractive and modern design, the source and copyright owner of all the material is properly documented, and all the information is available for download and additional machine-processing. A researcher could use the transcript and undertake a text mining analysis or encode Livingstone’s expedition in GIS. One can also browse the collection by item type (photograph, letter, diary, etc.), by addressee (for letters), or by date.
The website includes critical essays about Livingstone’s life and times, his expeditions, contemporary medicine, peoples of Africa, colonialism, and changes in his reputation over time. While these essays include the name of the author, they do not include the author’s affiliation and biography. Including this information could add to the authoritativeness of the information.
So is this project site an example of “digital humanities”? The site, in fact, used none of the digital methods we have discussed this term – text mining, topic modeling, network analysis, digital mapping, or information visualization. It is primarily a digital repository of all things Livingstone, along with digital copies of published scientific research regarding the imaging process and ink evaluations. It is includes a critical edition of his field diary in digital form. I would still consider it a digital humanities project. It is akin to the Mark Twain Project or the Walt Whitman Archive, both of which aim to be the authoritative resource for the author’s writings. There is scholarship in collecting and describing all the available evidence (letters, writings, images, artifacts) of the person or topic of interest.