approaching the digital library from multiple viewpoints

Pratik Chakrabarti, UK medical heritage library event

Approaching the digital library from multiple viewpoints27/10/2017

The various forms of visualizations are:

• Timeline: Displays information on events, and relates them to publications in the collection

• Dendrograms: A taxonomic tree

• Sunbursts: Pattern of irregular concentric bands of colour

• Ngrams:

Timeline

• The timeline has the risk of appearing a bit positivistic to the uninitiated reader, a progressive view of the history of medicine, particularly if this is geared towards classroom teaching

• We are dealing with these more as medical texts, than historical ones.

• Ideas of muscles, bodily organs and epidemics were historically contingent.

https://ukmhl.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/results?terms=Egyptian%20science

Challenges

• In future, very few might read texts as printed copies and will access them mostly through e platforms.

• One option could be to build in a more nuanced form visualization. For example, is it possible mix the timeline with the physiological data?

• The pedagogical challenges: classroom teaching will need to evolve around how to use online text mining tools.