Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana

This blog post introduces our newest member of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters project team, Jaap Geraerts. Jaap is the research assistant on the ‘Joined-Up Early Modern Diplomacy’ project, and will be working to generate visualizations from the Bodley project data until the end of December 2013. Jaap is ideally suited to this role, nearing the completion of his PhD in the UCL History deparment which focuses on early modern marriage practices of elite Low Countries families, as well as having solid technical skills from both his higher education and previous work experience.

Jaap writes:

‘From 1588 to 1597 Thomas Bodley served as the English ambassador in the United Provinces and was stationed in The Hague, while also representing his country in the Dutch Council of State. In this period Bodley sent and received around a 1000 letters, and thanks to the arduous work of Dr Robyn Adams we have access to a wealth of data, such as the places and people mentioned in the letters and the names of the authors and recipients of the letters. My main task as the research assistant of this project is to use this data to provide meaningful and insightful visualisations, which means that the visualisations should increase our understanding of Bodley’s network of correspondents and of the information that was spread through this network (the so-called ‘data-flow’).

In order to get started with the project I began with a survey of the various visualisation projects within and without the Digital Humanities to get an idea of the different ways in which data can be visualised. The Digital Humanities are a hot topic at the moment, with on-going projects such as HISGIS, Mapping the Republic of Letters, Mapping Books, and of course the various projects undertaken here at CELL, to name but a few. Moreover, conferences and seminars aim to discuss the research undertaken in the Digital Humanities and the methodological implications of using computer software such as Geographic Information Systems and Social Network Analysis, among other things.

It immediately became apparent that many different ways to visualise data are used, ranging from boxplots to fancy images that show networks of correspondents and their physical locations. The way in which the data is presented is of huge influence on the insights provided by the visualisations, and an important part of this project will therefore be to think about how we best can present the data that is gathered from Bodley’s letters. In this project the visualisations will be done in Gephi, open-source software which is mainly used for Social Network Analysis. One of the advantages of Gephi is that it is constantly updated, making available new functionalities and thus keeping up with the latest developments within information technology as well as with the wishes of its users. Furthermore, the program is user-friendly and provides tools for the manipulation of the data, enabling the user to highlight different aspects of the network, such as the centrality of a specific person in a network. It is important that the software is capable of producing the visualisations we want, for although resorting to information technology for our scholarly needs, the desired visualisations are the outcome of our academic interests and do not depend on the capacities of specific software. The goal is not just to produce pretty pictures: after all, we are still historians!

One of the tasks I have set myself since joining the project is to familiarise myself with the context as well as the content of the network, and its foundation of manuscript correspondence. Early modern letters are a fascinating archival resource with a specific set of features which lend themselves well to networks and systems of mapping social interaction. One of my main priorities during this project is to push the boundaries of historical network analysis and data visualization, and see if our understanding of the aforementioned specifics of epistolary communication (i.e. relating to letters) can be enhanced by the technology available to us for producing visual connections and meaning. Watch this space!’

*This is the second in a series of 6 posts from Dr Robyn Adams, one the recipients of the [DM2E Open Humanities Awards](http://openhumanitiesawards.org/).*

This post gives a little background to the project that will generate [data visualizations from the correspondence of Thomas Bodley](https://blog.okfn.org/files/2013/05/Thomas_Bodley-192×300.jpg). I hope to reveal the context of what Bodley was up to on the continent, and also get a little bit closer to the types of intelligence, news and reports he sent. This lies at the heart of the task to link the data embedded within the project: whether and how the contents of the letters can be reconstructed visually to create networks and patterns of information.

Thomas Bodley was nominated as the replacement for the outgoing English ambassador, and arrived in the Low Countries (now known as the Netherlands) in December 1588. His main role was to sit on the Dutch Council of State as one of two English representatives that Elizabeth I was permitted to appoint as part of the [Treaty of Nonsuch of 1585](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nonsuch). His brief was to represent English interests in the conflict against the Spanish and Catholic threats against England. He spent the next 9 years in The Hague where the Council was situated, constructing a solid network of correspondence with contacts back home in England and across northern Europe. He made journeys around the Low Countries from time to time, and only made the journey back home to England rarely.

His letters are typically a mix of military and political information: discussing the allegiances of Elizabeth’s fellow European sovereigns as to whether they would join the fight against Spain, charting the efforts of the Spanish to recapture towns that had rejected Spanish rule, and itemizing in scrupulous detail the movements of English, Dutch and enemy troops across the region. He was particularly punctilious in enumerating the quantity of troops, victuals and horses possessed by the enemy or promised by allies: crucial information for the English government when conducting a military campaign from afar.
Bodley was careful to report intelligence and news – even that which was unverified – in order that his political masters back home had the most up-to-date information to hand. A key practice of his was to copy out intercepted letters of intelligence and enclose them within his correspondence. This kind of letter-writing activity demanded substantial resources. Bodley had a secretary and aide, [George Gilpin](http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/view/article/10758), who was a veteran of English diplomatic service which had grown out of his mercantile career. Writing and copying out letters together, they would have required copious amounts of paper, ink, quills for writing, knives to shape, cut and sharpen the quills, sand for blotting the ink, and many more accoutrements now lost to the modern experience of handwriting. The archival remains of Bodley’s correspondence during his embassy to the Low Countries suggest that he was sending a letter nearly every day. Many of these letters are 5 or more folio pages long, and a huge number exist in 2 or more copies: these were dedicated letter-writing professionals.

Most diplomats of the period were careful to keep a copy of sent correspondence for reference and security – letters could easily get lost through interception and bad weather. The first few lines of letters in this period were often given over to making reference to letters already received, and alerting the reader to any letters previously sent. The method of postage was a royal service which brought the post between the English court and her continental ambassadors. Like the post today, this service was subject to delays, reliant as it was on good weather for a channel crossing, and well-rested horses being available for transport between towns.
When he departed for the Low Countries, Bodley was handed a [cipher](http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/bodley/images.html) so that if his letters were intercepted, they would be difficult to read. His patron admitted that the cipher was [‘not verie curiouslie made for avoidinge of trowble to us both but yet sufficient to serve our purpose’.](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/transcript.php?fname=xml//1590//DCB_0987.xml) (Most ciphers in this period were endlessly recycled and eminently breakable, and many European rulers had their own ‘black chambers’ staffed by code-breakers).
Yet the majority of his letters remain un-ciphered. Considering the sensitivity of the information contained in his diplomatic dispatches, this is surprising. However, the areas of the letters called the salutation (or opening line), and valediction (or closing line), often make reference to figures appointed to carry the letters personally between England and the Low Countries. These figures were called ‘bearers’, and it was their job to ensure that the letters were not intercepted or tampered with along their route to the recipient, and that they met with the minimum of delay. Along with an added measure of security, these figures add another facet to the correspondence of the early modern period: accompanying the letter, the bearer was frequently called upon by the recipient to furnish extra information; information which is for the most part now lost.

Thomas Bodley’s bearers – early modern ‘frequent flyers’, judging by their numerous cross-channel journeys – form interesting and ancillary nodes of this correspondence project and the task at hand to visualize the networks of information within. They are the human, often shadowy presence behind much of the correspondence, tracing and marking the physical route between recipient and correspondent in England and the Low Countries. Mentioned in the correspondence, and an active agent participating in the successful process and completion of the correspondence, they remain relatively un-credited. One of the purposes of the *Joined Up Early Modern Diplomacy Project* is to rehabilitate and recover information about these people (most often they are men). The exciting job at hand is to develop a means to visualize the networks of agents and correspondents in relation to their role within the letter network: can we work out a way of representing the bearer so their agency is visible despite not putting pen to paper?

*This is the second in a series of posts from Dr Bernhard Haslhofer, one the recipients of the [DM2E Open Humanities Award](http://openhumanitiesawards.org).*

In my [previous blog post](https://dm2e.eu/open-humanities-awards-maphup-update-1/) I briefly described the two main construction areas we are working on in order to provide semantic tagging functionality as part of the [Annotorious image annotation library](http://annotorious.github.io/). First we need to add GUI elements that display proposed semantic tags to users which allows them to accept or reject tags. Second, we need a backend-service that proposes tags based on textual annotation and context features.

Work on the front-end is making good progress and the [code base](https://github.com/annotorious/annotorious-semantic-tagging-plugin) is growing. Recently we were working on UI design issues with the goal to come with a appealing and intuitive interface. We also published first demos on the [Annotorious Github site](http://annotorious.github.io/demos.html).

At the moment, it is possible to use the Annotorious semantic tagging plugin with a running instance of [Wikipedia Miner](http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia-miner/), which returns relevant Wikipedia articles for given textual input. We use this information to generate semantic tags, which are then proposed on the user interface. Connecting Annotorious with instances of [DBPedia Spotlight](https://github.com/dbpedia-spotlight/dbpedia-spotlight), the [Freebase API](https://developers.google.com/freebase/) or any other commercial named entity recognition engine are possible extension points of the current front-end code base.

Besides connecting the Annotorious semantic tagging plugin with previously mentioned services, we will also continue working on Contextualism (https://github.com/behas/contextualism), which should be a light-weight alternative operating on simple gazeteers or taxonomies. We already defined the interface (see dev branch) and will work on the implementation in the upcoming weeks.

*This is the first in a series of posts from Dr Bernhard Haslhofer, one the recipients of the [DM2E Open Humanities Award](http://openhumanitiesawards.org).*

In my previous [blog post](https://blog.okfn.org/2013/05/08/announcing-the-open-humanities-award-winners/) I announced that we will use the Open Humanities Award to integrate [Maphub’s Semantic Tagging feature](http://maphub.github.io/) into [Annotorious](http://annotorious.github.io/), which is a light-weight JavaScript annotation tool that works for online images, including zoomable images – such as digitized maps. The semantic tagging feature will give people the opportunity to enrich their annotations with links to entities in existing knowledge graphs such as [Freebase](http://www.freebase.com/) or DBPedia (http://dbpedia.org/About), but also to customized knowledge contexts that reflect institution-specific needs. If for instance, someone uses Annotorious for a collection of images relating to automotive history, it should be possible to define a knowledge context reflecting concepts from that domain (e.g., cars, people related to car racing and technology, etc.).

Technically, this means we have build two things: (i) a plug-in for Annotorious that provides semantic tagging functionality on the user interface, and (ii) a lightweight tag recommendation service that proposes possibly related entities (semantic tags) from a given knowledge context.

[Rainer](http://twitter.com/aboutgeo), who is the mastermind behind Annotorious, is working on the plug-in and set up a [first beta demo](http://annotorious.github.io/demos.html). In the next step we will focus on the tag recommendation service and its integration with the front-end and expect a first beta by the end of July. Follow https://github.com/annotorious/annotorious and https://github.com/behas/contextualism for technical feedback and further updates.

*This is the first in a series of 6 posts from Dr Robyn Adams, one the recipients of the [DM2E Open Humanities Awards](http://openhumanitiesawards.org).*

[This project](http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/bodley/bodley.html) focuses on the people and places mentioned in the bundle of the c.1000 letters which survives from the embassy of Thomas Bodley to the Low Countries in the 1580s and 1590s. With the assistance of the Open Humanities Award, the project team will use the open data from the corpus of diplomatic correspondence to produce data visualizations.

[Thomas Bodley](http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/bodley/biography.html) was a scholar and a diplomat, sent to negotiate England’s interests in aiding the Dutch in the war against Spain. Based in The Hague for around ten years, on and off, hundreds of his letters exist in the archives from this period which document the military, political and diplomatic activity of the time. Bodley was in correspondence with [Queen Elizabeth I](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/elizabeth_I) and the major politicians of the period back home at the English court, and was required to keep them up to date with fresh news, intelligence and reports about various aspects of the war. [The letters are crammed full of interesting information](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/transcript.php?fname=xml//1589//DCB_0805.xml), ranging from the complicated [dynastic marriage negotiations](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/transcript.php?fname=xml//1592//DCB_1110.xml) of the major ruling families of the numerous provinces of the Low Countries, to the [secret nocturnal movements of troops](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/transcript.php?fname=xml//1592//DCB_0396.xml). This diverse information offers a rich context in which to read the diplomatic manoeuvres and negotiations with which Bodley was occupied. (It also seems he was sent on an errand by Sir [Francis Walsingham](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Walsingham) Queen Elizabeth’s chief intelligence officer – a data wrangler of his own time – to [search the Amsterdam area for joints of gammon to send back to England)]( http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/transcript.php?fname=xml//1585//DCB_0612.xml).

In the early stages of the project, I (as principal investigator and editor of the letters) decided to encode ‘extra’ information that I knew would be valuable, even though I wasn’t quite sure how it would be used. This extra information included complex and extensive lists of people and places mentioned in the letters. This information was not always easy to rationalize in the sense of working out to whom or where Bodley was referring in his letters. In [one letter he wrote to his recipient that the Duke of Brunswick’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius,_Duke_of_Brunswick-L%C3%BCneburg) eldest son would be married to the [Duke of Saxony’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus,_Elector_of_Saxony) second eldest daughter. It took some avid sleuthing through the family trees of the northern European sovereign states in the early modern period to work out that Heinrich Julius, son of the [Duke of Brunswick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Julius,_Duke_of_Brunswick-L%C3%BCneburg) was going to marry [Dorothea, second daughter of Augustus, Duke of Saxony](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/transcript.php?fname=xml//1585//DCB_0080.xml).

Because the spelling of the period is extremely odd to the modern eye, which makes searching for specific words difficult, I figured that tagging this extra data in the XML transcripts would offer an alternative entry route to the corpus of letters for browsing, and at the same time offer scholars outside my own immediate academic constituency (history, English literature, textual and archive studies) the opportunity to wrangle the project’s data sets. I figured that someone, somewhere might be interested in these elements, and it would be worthwhile to tag them. Moreover, in the current economic academic climate it is unlikely that another scholar will edit the letters electronically, so I thought it worth the added labour. I also tried to envisage and anticipate which elements from the corpus would interest and attract scholars in other fields. I knew it was desirable for a digital edition to be able to speak to other communities, and contain data and information that could be extracted for varied purposes. As far as I could, with the limited resources to hand (the project team consisted of three persons, two of whom were part-time on the project), I attempted to ‘future-proof’ the edition by tagging as much data as I could. The result: two extremely long lists of names of people and places which offer a standard entry route to the corpus of correspondence, but which (more excitingly) offer a starting point to make some extremely tantalizing data visualizations.

As part of the Open Humanities Award, I now intend to behave as a new user of this data. The rich lists of people and places previously tagged in the body of the project offer an ideal chunk of data from which to wrangle and generate visualizations. We propose to use the open source software [Gephi](https://gephi.org/) to generate these visualizations, and I am really looking forward to seeing if new patterns for study emerge.
The project data is on [Github](https://github.com/livesandletters). The tags were indexed as [biographical](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/index.php?option=person) and [geographical](http://cell.livesandletters.ac.uk/Bodley/index.php?option=place) lists.

It is clear from his later correspondence and bibliographical activity that Bodley’s networks of friends and acquaintances established across northern Europe – almost certainly during this period – assisted in the creation of one of the oldest research libraries in the world, [the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford](http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley). The visualizations, which will have scope to be playful while drawn from scrupulous scholarship, will offer an alternative pathway for scholars and the interested public to understand that in this period especially, the political, university and kinship networks were fundamental to advancement and prosperity. I propose to plumb the data already stored within the project to open the aperture wider, to try and understand Bodley’s place within the European network of agents, diplomats, military personnel and intelligencers. In mapping the relational activity between data sets, I hope to further illuminate and reanimate Bodley’s position within the Elizabethan compass and beyond.

We are hiring! CELL is seeking a Research Assistant to help with the data visualizations in this project. If you are interested in applying for this post (fixed term contract), please go [here for more information on the vacancy](http://tinyurl.com/nldt6rp).

Dr Robyn Adams is the Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at UCL. Her work has led her from [tantalizing spy letters](http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/projects/letters-william-herle) of the sixteenth century, through heavy diplomatic corpora to epic enumerative bibliography of the early records of the Bodleian Library.