After looking through the American Historical Associations website I noticed an interesting excerpt. The American Historical Association conducted a conference in the beginning of 2018 that included a section called, “Digital Projects Lightning Round.” There were about 15 separate digital history projects that reigned from Omeka sites to text mining. Of these separate sites, the one that intrigued me the most is, “The Well Read President: Examining the Reading Habits of Theodore Roosevelt,” by Ms. Karen Sieber at Loyola University in Chicago, IL.
Her Project begins with a Word Press site that explains how she came to wonder and in turn research this topic. She understood that Theodore Roosevelt throughout his life is an avid reader and an author himself to many manuscripts. Sieber saw the opportunity for a truly interesting text mining project that can show influence through Theodore Roosevelt’s political career. She creates a visual timeline of teach book that Roosevelt is believed to have read during 1901-1904, his first term as president. The timeline also includes a virtual bookshelf that holds a selection of these books through themes. Sieber’s main purpose and thesis of the digital project is to show Roosevelt’s connection to the books that he read and how they shape his diplomatic decisions as well as his family relationships.
Once entering the timeline, the user is presented with a quote by Theodore Roosevelt himself that explains his love for books and how they connect with the idea of choice. The quote is presented with an image of Roosevelt sitting in his own personal library at home. The user is then asked to click onto the next slide that explains everything that is written in paragraph two while also including that each book in the virtual bookshelf can be read for free with a link through the book title. The slide show continues and begins with the first book on October 12th, 1901 being, “Uncle Remus.” An image of an illustration within the book is placed next to a short paragraph that explains President Theodore Roosevelts connection to the book being a duty as a father. This slide show goes on and proceeds in this arrangement through the timeline of his first term. Looking at the timeline, which is placed above the slide show, the user can interact with it. The user is allowed to skip around the timeline and choose which book they would like to learn more about and the books relationship to the former president. On the left-hand side of the timeline, each book is placed in a group of themes. These themes include, Father, President, Intellectual, Historian, and Outdoorsman.
Some points that do need to be addressed are the user interaction with the themes and the number of books on the timeline. The timeline could be improved by allowing the user to choose one of the assortments of themes to look at only a certain range of books. This is an organizational suggestion that could make it easier for the user to understand the concept. The other quick concern is that there is no scroll bar to move through the timeline making it harder to see the full scope of it. There are a good number of books on the timeline, but it does seem contradicting when the introduction explains that Theodore Roosevelt would at many times read a book a day. This timeline only places a handful of books a month, this may just be due to lack of resources. One may not be able to know each, and every book read by Theodore Roosevelt during this time. Overall this digital project is very exciting, and I believe is the best way to show this type of research. This research is made to best be done as a digital project. https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1XxQsrOujJ-jtnzdjaF15oXhvXN4pJUurFnxf8_Xsc6w&font=Default&lang=en&timenav_position=top&initial_zoom=2&height=650
