I’m pleased to announce the launch of Digital Harlem v2.
Over the last several years Ian Johnson has been migrating our research database to the the Heurist knowledge management system (HeuristNetwork.org), which he developed with Artem Osmakov (University of Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences).
This migration brings several changes to the Digital Harlem interface:
- Search is now faceted search, which allows a user to progressively narrow the selection of events or places to be displayed on the map by selecting various criteria. See the pages on searching events and places for details.
- Search now includes an additional facet: source type. This allows us the selection and comparison of records based on different types of sources, such as legal records and newspapers.
- Search no longer includes people; instead you can select a person from a list. As we have only been able to enter information on a small fraction of the people that appear in our sources, searches for people produced misleading results. The selected individuals are those for which we have sources that provide more details of their lives.
- Maps now include a timeline showing when records on the map occurred.
- Featured maps can now include multiple sets of search results.
I have taken the opportunity of the move to new database to update the information that appears on the site. The Home and About pages now explicitly identify the site as a research tool. A list of our publications has been added, in which you can find interpretations we have offered based on the site. There is also a FAQ that addresses some of the common responses to the site.
Digital Harlem Blog 