Month: March 2019

Python is a coding language that is used for programming that historians have begun to utilize to assist in their research.  Before taking this course, I never used or even heard of the program before so learning how to use it was an interesting learning experience.  I was able to complete up to lesson six and was starting lesson seven before I ran out of time.  The lessons were simple to follow with the beginning ones being straightforward to understand but then got a bit more difficult as they went on.

The first three lessons were great for a beginner like myself who was entirely new to Python.  The first lesson was straightforward where you type ‘hello world’ and run it through the program to see how it works.  The second lesson was learning about HTML and web pages.  After learning about HTML and how it works earlier in the year, it was an easy review lesson.  I found it helpful just to refresh my memory on HTML since I also have never used it before this class.  The third lesson got more into the different workings of Python.  It went through different technicalities around how the codes are typed out.  It was interesting to see how the different codes worked when they were run in the program.  It was easy for me to follow the lesson plan, but I had a more difficult time trying to understand the point of it and where it was going.

Lessons four to six got into even more details on the various uses for Python.  Lesson Four was about functions and modules of codes and how to reuse codes to make programming easier.  It was easy to follow the steps and recreate the codes, but it was harder for me to understand the difference between functions and modules.  I also had a hard time trying to picture how these codes would be used in a program and what their overall purpose is.  Lesson five was more intriguing, and I could see why it is essential and useful for a wide range of users.  The lesson taught how to download webpages so that its content could be saved which I found pretty straightforward to follow along and complete.  The last lesson I completed was six, and I found it to be more interesting than some of the other ones.  It taught how to manipulate message strings to change the final message when the program was run.  It taught different ways to run words more than once, make the letters upper or lower case, count the letters, add or subtract words, and so on.  It was cool to do, and I could see how some of these manipulation codes could be useful when typing out a long program.

I learned after this brief introduction to Python is that I do not enjoy the program that much and probably won’t use it any time in the foreseeable future.  I do not know enough about computer science and programming to fully understand the concepts and the different parts that go into making codes.  I would probably appreciate the workings of Python better if I took more time to look into it, but I do not have any interest in learning more about it right now.  I also found it hard to understand how this program would help historians in their research.  Some of the lessons such as downloading webpages and turning the web data into textual data would be helpful to historians who are using information from websites.  I think that Python, like any digital tool, can be useful to historians, but at the same time it probably is not the most helpful tool.  I think it would benefit the historians who know how to use it effectively or have the time to learn how to use it and apply it to their research.  For the people who do not know how to use it and do not have the time or interest to learn then the program is not useful.

 

Learning how to use ArcGIS over the past two weeks has been an enjoyable and educational experience that showed through a hands-on experience just how useful the tool is for historians.  The first map I created in ArcGIS is based on lesson one on how to use the program from the Geospatial Historian website.  The lesson plan was straightforward to follow which was very useful for beginners, like myself who have never used a program like this before.  Downloading the maps and spreadsheets and opening them up in ArcGIS was simple to do.  The information needed for this lesson was in a large spreadsheet which would have taken a long time to accumulate and organize it well onto a computer which most historians would have to do when creating maps to help with their research.  Uploading the maps into the program and manipulating them so that they could both be seen was also straightforward, and being able to change the colour of the image was a nice a nice touch as a way to personalize them a bit more.

Once it was time to add the spreadsheet data, things got a bit more complicated but not too difficult to do by following the lesson’s instructions.  Connecting the spreadsheet’s data, so it matched with the map’s data had a few steps that made sense with what the instructions said but could quickly be forgotten by beginners who are just getting used to using ArcGIS.  After the data was connected, it could be explored such as how many people were born in a particular state during a specific year, how many people from a different country lived in a particular state, how many men and women were there, and so on.  By being able to explore the data visually, different questions can be asked of the data since it can be looked at in a different way than coming up with questions after reading documents.  For this map, the lesson outlines that for this map I will be figuring out how many Norwegian born people lived in the Great Plains states during the 1930s.

To get the map to show me what I wanted a series of steps were involved that the lesson outlined nicely.  By following what was described, it was reasonably straightforward to get the map to show how many Norwegian-born people lived in each state compared to the total population.  Without the lesson to guide me though it would be hard to figure out how to get the map to display the people and it would take me a while to memorize all the steps if I were to make future maps.  After adding the title, legend, and scale, it could easily be seen that this map is showing the percentage of Norwegian-born people in each county in the Great Plains and where most of them lived.

The third lesson from the Geospatial Historian taught me how to georeference scanned maps.  I found this lesson to be quicker to complete but a bit more confusing to follow.  Uploading the required maps and organizing them in the appropriate layer order was simple after creating the previous map.  What was new was adding the georeferencing toolbar and adding the scanned map to it for it to be georeferenced with the map of the outlined states.  Finding the toolbar was pretty easy but remembering the rest of the steps would take repeating the steps more to remember them.  I found adding the control points to be one of the most simple steps, and it was interesting watching the maps begin to fit with each other as more points were added.  The part of the lesson that confused me was the section that explained the offset of the maps and how those calculations related to how far off the map is distance wise.  For a lesson on how to georeference the distance offset is not a big deal, however,  it would be for someone who is doing research and needs that data to be as accurate as possible.  To make the map more accurate would take adding more control points and deleting ones that have a high offset.  Below is an image of the finished product of a scanned map fitted into a map of outlined states in ArcGIS.

Overall, this program was fun to use even though there are many steps to creating maps and would take a great deal of time to memorize them all.  I think programs like ArcGIS are beneficial for historians because it allows data to be seen from a new visual perspective which can be helpful for historians to ask new questions in their research.  Below is a link to the Geospatial Historian website which has tutorials on how to use free programs like ArcGIS for anyone who wants to learn something new.

https://geospatialhistorian.wordpress.com