For my first blog post, I decided to reverse engineer The Walt Whitman Archive. Originally when I was going through the list of the digital humanities projects, the Walt Whitman archive caught my attention because it was a familiar name. I recall in high school studying Walt Whitman and mainly his poetry, so I thought it would be a perfect time to learn more about a familiar subject as well as practice my skills in dissecting a digital humanities project. The first thing I noticed when I got onto the the page was the picture of Walt Whitman staring at me, but after I got over that fact, I decided to go straight to the “about” page. The about page mainly described the legacy of Walt Whitman, him being a world renown author, and potentially America’s most influential poet. They go on to describe his types of work and how impactful they have been to the academia of writing. The Whitman Archive is “the most comprehensive record of works by and about Whitman.”
I was able to identify the sources of the project from the about page. The archive mainly drew “on the resources of libraries and collections from around the world.” For the most part the website is a compilation of all the writings and works of Walt Whitman. It is a vast amount of information so it is obvious how thorough the creators were in creating the website.
The processing of the project is very organized. On the home page It is broken down into categories: Published Works, In Whitman’s Hand, Life& Letters, Commentary, Pictures & Sound, Resources, and About the Archive and then under those categories are subcategories if the user wishes to get more specific with their search of Walt Whitman. The processing of this project is fairly simple given that it is data taken from point A (the libraries) to point B (the digital humanities project). However, it is very impressive in the amount of information they were able to provide.
In terms of presentation. I really enjoyed the clean and straightforward access of the website. It was fairly easy to navigate the website and whenever I was looking for something, I was able to find the data I needed in a very efficient manner. Although the format of the presentation wasn’t extremely colorful or super creative, I believe that it was the best mode to present the information. For a website that it is dedicated to categorize everything about Walt Whitman’s life, I believe that the best way to present the data is in a categorized and bookmarked manner like they did in this project.
Hi there,
I liked your succinct account of the processing of the data, as it was clear and straightforward. Perhaps in the future, you could incorporate the screen captures you use into your blog posts. For example, a screen capture of the about page, which could be posted directly above or below your paragraph outlining the about page, would have enhanced to my understanding of your post. Overall, however, I think you have done a nice job of summarizing the Whitman project in a fun and engaging fashion.
Hi Mr. Piyankoon! I loved that you started your blog post from the POV of someone who has never seen the Walt Whitman project. It made the blog post very relatable and engaging for readers and takes us through the thought process of a fresh viewer. I, too, was caught off guard by Whitman’s portrait initially, but after moving past that, I thought your analysis was spot on. Good work!