http://livingstone.library.ucla.edu/
For this post I looked at the David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project which holds a collection of enhanced photographs of Livingstone’s original 1870 and 1871 field diaries as well as 1871 letters from the explorer. The collection also provides transcriptions for the diary entries and letters since they are for the most part illegible especially given the limited materials Livingstone had when writing them.
The 1871 field diary exposes Livingstone’s time in Central Africa that he spent stranded in a small village without proper utensils. In order to document his experiences, Livingstone was forced to get creative, but his resulting means left his original thoughts difficult to decipher. Thus the project worked to make the words clearer and then offer the collection to users. This particular period in Livingstone’s time in Africa was significant since the trauma of witnessing the massacre of nearly 500 African people was later relayed back on the continent, helping to influence the opinion towards the colonial presence in Africa.
In looking critically at the project, I think an interesting paper topic might be to address the portion of the site that offers a three text view of Livingstone’s original field diary in comparison with his updated and edited version as well as a posthumously published version.
The transcriptions of these three texts side by side offers insight into the discrepancies that occur after immediate reflection versus later recollection. Especially with Livingstone’s massacre narrative it would be interesting to take note of how his story may or may not have changed and what that says about Livingstone or his experiences. I thought perhaps the site might go into exploring that more, but given that the aim of the project was only to provide the diaries to the public I can understand why they didn’t delve into that. Given that Livingstone’s original thoughts are so disjointed it is nice to have the three text views since in the later publications he gives more complete thoughts. Still, if you’re looking at the three text view you’re still not given the complete context of each entry which would help to provide a stronger narrative, again it makes sense why that is not available. To improve the project they might offer more analysis and context of Livingstone’s entries, as well as improvements in the site’s overall layout since it isn’t particularly modern which can inhibit its accessibility in some areas.