Visualization Ideas

This page features a growing list of ideas for visualizing MJP data and metadata. The following list of color-coded categories indicates the variety of information categories that inform each idea.

▘The subject matter visualized (which may or may not be tagged in the MJP files): e.g., author, editor, genre, page length
▘The extent or breadth of the subject matter (which likely corresponds to the number of MJP files used): e.g., the contents from one issue, multiple issues, an entire journal, multiple journals
▘The type of MJP files used: MODS files (catalogue records of each journal issue) or TEI files (text transcripts of each journal issue)
▘The generic type of visualization: e.g., table, pie chart
▘The software or tools used to create the visualization: e.g., Protovis, Many Eyes
▘How the visualization supplements the MJP’s search pages: i.e, does it offer a new view of already-available MJP information or (more strongly) new information not available through the search pages?

Idea 1: exhaustive lists of a magazine’s contents

Build tables that list all authors who published in a magazine, first sorted alphabetically and then ranked by the number of each author’s contributions. Also, build tables that represent all texts of a certain genre (like poetry) that appeared in a magazine. [▘authors, genres; ▘entire journal; ▘MODS files; ▘table; ▘Google Docs charts; ▘new info]

Click here for tables representing contributors and genres in Others magazine.

Idea 2: comparison of selected author contributions

Use a bar chart to compare the same author’s contributions (by number and frequency over time) in multiple journals, or the contributions that multiple authors made in a single journal. [▘selected authors; ▘one or more journals; ▘MODS files; ▘bar chart; ▘Google Docs charts ▘new view]

Click here for charts that compare multiple authors’ contributions to The Egoist, The Little Review, and Others.

Idea 3: comparison of texts from a selected genre

Same as idea 2, but with genre: compare the number of items from the same genre (e.g., letters) published in multiple journals, or the number of items from multiple genres (e.g., poetry, fiction, and articles) that appear in a single journal. [▘selected genres; ▘one or more journals; ▘MODS files; ▘bar chart; ▘ ? ▘new info]

Idea 4: comprehensive representations of entire journals

Provide new and exciting ways to see, in a single instance, an entire run of a journal, thus amalgamating the information that’s currently segregated in the contents pages for the various issues of an MJP journal. [▘authors, titles, page lengths; ▘entire journal; ▘MODS files; ▘nodetree, sunburst graphics; ▘Protovis ▘new view]

Click here for three examples of such visualizations of Others.

Idea 5: journal size

Compare multiple journals in terms of their total pagination (page length of all issues added together) or their total word counts, and then display the results as relatively-sized circles—and perhaps represent each journal further as a set of smaller circles, each representing the length of a single issue. [▘word or page lengths; ▘one or more journals; ▘MODS files (for page counts), TEI files (for word counts); ▘?; ▘?; ▘new info]

Idea 6: network analysis

Use a dataset drawn from several journals to sort out which authors published in all of them, which authors published in any two, and which published in only one—and then represent that visually (maybe using some sort of Venn diagram, with overlapping circles). Also, calculate/represent the number of each author’s contributions to each set of journals. [▘authors, titles; ▘multiple journals; ▘MODS files; ▘network graph; ▘Gephi, ORA; ▘new info]

Idea 7: gender of contributors

Identify the gender of contributors against a list of names to group them by gender. Then, count the contributions (item by item, or page by page) that authors of either gender made to each magazine and represent those percentages with a chart. Also, complicate the binary encoding of gender by adding fluidity and other states to the dataset. [▘gender of authors; ▘one journal; ▘MODS files; ▘pie chart; ▘ Google Docs charts; ▘new info]

Click here to see some pie charts visualizing the gender of journal contributors.