Upon accessing the Sample Book website, I noticed all of the categories of Digital Humanities that we discussed in class organized at the top of the page. From left to right, the categories are: Archive, Visualization, Mapping, Digital edition, Network Analysis, Textual Analysis and Audio Analysis. These different categories of Digital Humanities research allow the student to choose his or her research style of preference and peruse several helpful research projects. A lot of the research projects are very detailed and could be used as examples of what our research projects should look like when the time comes to construct one. There are several images and voice recordings available that make learning about history a lot easier in addition to simply reading about a historical event.
The archives page included a website about old weather, an Abraham Lincoln virtual museum and a database of indigenous peoples in North America. These websites are home to hundreds of artifacts that were converted into digital data in order to retain the information that may otherwise be lost due to fragility. It is difficult to recover original artifacts from centuries ago because they may have withered with time or are difficult to understand, and thus when scholars transcribe these documents or images they maintain the importance of the artifacts. We are still able to absorb the information and understand the proper documentation that was used at a certain time period. Another advantage of creating a digital artifact from archival documents is that once it gets published on the internet, it will remain there forever. There is no way to misplace the artifact and it can be surfaced at any time.
The downside of this process is that the digital artifacts lose their authenticity when transcribed. It is tough to appreciate a picture of a document compared to a wrinkled paper that survived hundreds of year; the artifacts are not as special anymore. Approaching my future project, I will have to spend a lot of time finding quality digital artifacts that I will use. Also, I have to present my information in a way that is entertaining and not boring or dry. Nonetheless, I am positive I can construct a successful project given the resources I have.