I am pleased to announce the completion of the pilot of the Stratford-upon-Avon Memory Map project. Users can navigate to various cultural heritage sites related to Shakespeare that are located in and around Stratford-upon-Avon and click on the markers to see a visualization of the words most commonly used to describe these sites in 19th century guidebooks. All guidebooks used in this project are linked via the guidebooks tab, and by clicking the button for each guidebook users can explore the entire digitized text on Google Books. Users can also access the guidebooks on the sites tab, which includes an image and table that lists the pages used to create the visualization for each site. This information can also be accessed by clicking the name of the site in its pop up on the map. The website was created using Bootstrap Studio, the map was created using LeafletJS and Mapbox, and the word clouds were created in Voyant Tools.
Moving forward, I hope to expand the scope of this project by incorporating more sites and guidebooks. In addition to using more guidebooks from the 19th century, I also hope to expand to different time periods as well. I’m also investigating alternatives to word clouds for the visualizations on the map. This summer, I have received funding to travel to Stratford-upon-Avon where I will be able to explore the archives of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and take my own photographs to use on the sites page of the website. This project will serve as the basis for the digital portion of my dissertation, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves over the next two years of my PhD program.
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