The final project in DHS F21 is a project-based research exercise assembling, describing, analyzing and selecting data in order to "tell a story" about an Arab city in the past. The final step of this process is an ESRI storymap on a subject you have become interested in through your research. There are multiple steps before arriving at final product. They will unfold over several weeks at the end of the semester.
The basic idea of the project is that you will be given a number of data sources, some of which are locatable in the city and you will be asked to create a multimodal story about a topic which emerges from those sources. Your instructor has constructed this exercise as one possible "workflow" for spatially-based research. You have the opportunity to think through primary sources and to practice your data storytelling skills while learning a lot about a country that many of you would never have visited!
Tunis in 1961 was in a fascinating, yet also difficult, phase of history. Independence from the French took place in 1956, so it was in a phase called "decolonization" during which the institutions left by the French protectorate were changing, many people were leaving the city and others were migrating from the countryside. The president was Habib Bourguiba.
What topic might you choose?
One of the most important questions you will face is how to choose your topic. It should be based on a few main questions:
personal interest of the team members
the availability of data (see below) that you can bring together to tell a story
the boundedness of the project (you cannot do everything!)
What are some ideas for project themes?
Since the digitized phone book with its data available through the searchable PDF is perhaps our most organized source, I would suggest that you begin there. Your research for your spatial storytelling project about Tunis in 1961 can begin either spatially, categorically or based on the names you find. The three approaches will end up with a similar product, although your data and the way you go about your data set creation will be different. A list of possible topics can be found here.
Spatial approach:
choose a few streets in the old city (medina) and compile what you can about the objects sold there (pottery, spices, tanneries, etc) and the people who are listed there. You will use names of streets to search in the phone directory.
choose a neighborhood or suburb of the capital and research its history. (Carthage, Gammarth, Ariana, La Goulette, Le Bardo, Megrine, La Marsa, Sidi Bou Said, Hammam Lif, Monplaisir). These are found at the end of the phone directory.
choose a neighborhood of the capital city and make an analysis of how the street names have changed across the maps of the 20th century. We know that street names are a highly symbolic index of politics and a remaking of the city. Who was living there and why do you think the names changed?
Categorical approach:
choose a profession or group of professions in the phone directory and attempt to map them. What can we say about business types or family businesses and where they lived in the city? Were there places in the city specialized for certain professions, classes?
focus on the names which have data next to them: dle = domicile, Mme Vve (widow), Mlle (=Miss).
you can use sections of the phone directory which are already labelled (doctors, p 47-, newspapers, cafés, hotels, imprimeries)
Name-based approach:
choose a few names connected to a specific identity (Muslims, Jews, Italians, French, etc). We have to be careful here since naming practices vary according to the different groups. Where did they live in the city in 1961?
The format of your finished project:
Your storymap should include maps made from a dataset of about 75 data points (working alone) 150 data points (working in pairs), as well as pictures, old maps and text which contextualizes your maps. This means that you will have to group together different kinds of entries in the phone directory following one of the approaches above.
Your final project will be submitted in four parts (new tab, each of these parts on a subpage):
a project plan (drafted in the week of 22 November) of about 100 words, you can include this project plan on one of the subpages - together
a structured dataset (name, profession FR/EN, address, phone number, plus any other categories) in the form of a google sheet/csv file embedded or downloadable from your site (see note on "Personally Identifiable Information" below for the name column) - together
a link to a storymap in which you highlight aspects of your dataset you researched from the phone directory. It should contain at least 3 maps, or zoomed sections of a map, 5 slides (on your own) or 7 slides (in pairs) and contextualizing imagery. - together
a reflective essay of 500 words or so about the process of putting together the storymap (this should be published to your course site with a link to the storymap) and reflection on how you kept to, or changed, the project plan. - individual
Team work is possible
If you choose to work in a team of two, you should produce twice as much data, but there can be only one storymap (7 slides). The storymap can only be published by one of you, but you should do separate reflective essays in which you explain in 100 additional words which portions of the process you were responsible for.
What kinds of archives are available to us?
official archives (national libraries)
unofficial archives (social media, private archives)
my research assistant has collected plenty of these here
What kinds of data will you use?
visual data (digitized photographs, video)
geotagged structured data (names, professions and addresses from our digitized 1961 phone book)
screenshots of old maps
Personally Identifiable Information:
Although 1961 was 60 years ago, some of the people mentioned in the phone directory could still be alive and certainly they have surviving relatives. When constructing your datasets, it would be best to have an "anonymized column" listing only the family name or first name of someone (but not both). Such information is the only information which should appear in popup boxes available on your map.
This is part of the ethical dimensions of working with digitized collections and maps we discussed in the first days of the semester. See the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions statement on "Access to Personally Identifiable Information in Historical Records" and their statement on the "Right to Be Forgotten".