Methodology
Data
​
As my project is focused on an author and her books, the data I used was by default the books. I chose to take a paper version of the books, and not an online version, to be able to read the book and tap on my computer at the same time. 5 novels out of Jane Austen's six complete novels were chosen ; the choice was made by whether I had read the book previoulsy or not. As I had not read Mansfield Park before, it was therefore left out.
For practical reasons, to not have 5 heavy books, I checked out a book that gathered all of her completed novels. For the author's life, I took two biographies, one short and one extensive in order to have the most reliable data possible . As my data is mainly textual, I felt it would be strange if ; at one point, I did not used some text-analysis tool: Voyant was recommended to me. For the titles of the books I used, see Sources & Thanks .
​
Website
​
The project's next step was to choose the support of the project and how I would showcase it. It was natural to choose a website, not only for the Digital appeal (not using a Digital format in a Digital Class would have been strange) but also because it was the format that allowed me the largest added content ( music, videos, etc).
​
After some quick research, I found two websites creating platforms that sounded equally nice: Weebly and Wix (WordPress seemed too blank). In the end, I elected to use Wix for its beautiful and highly personalizable templates.
Mapping
I quickly knew that for my project, I wanted to create a map. Not only because it is a logical means if you want to help people situate unfamiliar places, but also because, during class, we studied a project using an interactive map: the Navigating The Green Book Project. As soon as I saw their map, I knew I wanted to emulate them.
However, I quickly realized it was not as easy as it seemed: I had to change platforms several times.
Mapping tools I used :
-
Mapwarper : whatever mapping tool I would use, my idea was to have a map that would look like one Jane Austen could have used in her time. So I needed to find a good quality historic map (which was not easy) and georeferenced it ( which means to superpose it on an actual Google satellite map). After one hour or two, Mapwarper, being rather easy to use once the concept is understood (you need to create several identical reference points on your historic map and the Google map ),I had a georeferenced map ready to be used.
-
Mapbox : I then headed to Mapbox, intending to recreate the Navigating the Green book map à la Jane Austen. However, Mapbox proved to be quite difficult for me to use and understand, given the timeframe to create and present the project, but above all, given my non-existent knowledge of Coding. In the end, I used Mapbos to create a background layer for my actual map.
After several researches, I was a little despairing. Either the mapping platform was not free, or it was abandoned and not have the functionality I wanted (adding my own background layer and creating an itinerary). My teacher recommended me the Archis webmap, which finally allowed me to use my Excel Spreadsheets with the data I gathered from the books and have my own background layer.
​
However, I struggled with having an itinerary. I had points, but there were no links between them, no itinerary. In the end, I discovered I could manually draw on the map and used this function to link the cities by book/ and Jane Austen's life, which ended in the map you can see on the Map page.
( I had to give up the itinerary function though, which saddened me a little...).
