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VISUALISING A MULTILINGUAL PRIVATE GUESTBOOK FROM 20 -CENTURY JERUSALEM TH Full page scans Recogito OpenRefine OSD Vikus Python preprocessing signature only 52% with text 47% non-script 3% Entries by content type Lan 66% Hebrew 35% Frequency of alphabets other 1% ink 56% ball pen 31% pencil 13% Use of writing implements Sun 31% Wed 20% Mon 14 % Tue 11% Thu 11% Sat 11% Fri 5% Visitors by weekdays* *based on entries with exact date Visitors by gender (m/f)* *based on authority file or first name 50 % 50 % Visitors with academic title 11 % Research Context: Exploring Digitised Cultural Collections The main objective of the research project “A Fresh Look. Visualising Digitised German-Jewish Archives” at the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” is to investigate human information seeking strategies in archival contexts that go beyond targeted, systematic searching, namely open-ended, curiosity-driven browsing based on the available visual information. In the digital context, appropriate and user-friendly visualisation solutions can enable and facilitate exploratory approaches and increase the chance of serendipitous discoveries by humanities scholars acting as so-called “information flaneur”. The project draws on material from the digitisation of 24 personal archives and collections of 19 and 20 century German-Jewish intellectuals, which was carried out in 2021–2022 in cooperation with the National Library of Israel. The contents of 19,000+ archival files was transformed into 740,000+ digital images. As an exemplary use case, Signatures of Friendship, the digital edition of a 20 -century multilingual guestbook from Jerusalem combines two open-source viewers, each offering a different visual experience, different interaction options and thus a different perspective on the same historical material. th th th Historical Context: a Place of Gathering The Jerusalem home of the artist couple Miryam Ben-Gavriêl (born Martha Schnabel, 1893– 1980) and Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl (born Eugen Hoeflich, 1891–1965) was a place of crosscultural gathering and intellectual encounter. From their immigration to Mandatory Palestine in 1927 and until the husband’s death in 1965 the two kept a guestbook recording the visitors to their house. Today, it is held in the Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl Archive at the National Library of Israel (call no. ARC. Ms. Var. 365 1 11). Nearly 1,200 individual entries in German, Hebrew, English, French, Arabic and more than a dozen other languages provide a fascinating glimpse into the personal and professional networks of the Ben-Gavriêls. Signatures, greetings, dedications, poems and drawings offer a window into a variety of contexts, including German-Jewish immigration, German exile literature, Hebrew literature, Zionism, British Mandate Jerusalem, German-Israeli post-war relations and more. Above all, the guestbook is a testament to the ideals of hospitality, tolerance and lasting friendship put into practice in a turbulent historical setting at the crossroads of East and West. From Object to Code to Viewers: the Technical Path High quality scanned images of each page of the guestbook were annotated using Recogito, a free, open source Web platform. Each guestbook entry was delimited and marked on the page using a bounding box. Where possible, the text was transcribed, and the annotations were exported to a database. Further metadata information was added for each entry, including where possible the name of the visitor(s), plus authority files and additional resources. The language and script of the entries was identified and a translation into English provided. Some events were also identified where a number of visitors attended and signed the guestbook. On the basis of the images, bounding boxes, and metadata, two separate viewers were created, using python processing to load and preprocess the data, then generate and output HTML, CSS, Javascript and JSON files. The Canvas view uses Vikus Viewer, a web-based visualization system that displays individual entries which can be clicked to view a details panel, plus keywords and a search function. The Full-Page view uses the OpenSeadragon javascript library, and shows the entries in context with next and previous page buttons and image zoom and pan, and also features a details panel. In both views, links are provided to related entries, such as events and other visits by the same guests. Canvas View: VIKUS Viewer Amy Isard Hub of Computing and Data Science Universität Hamburg Full-Page View: OpenSeadragon Dr. Sebastian Schirrmeister Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ Universität Hamburg Guestboook Hosts Alphabets Languages Years Pages Visitors Entries Data points Figures Statistics Samuel Josef Agnon | Max Brod | Oskar Kokoschka | Arnold Zweig | Arthur Schnabel | Khushwant Singh | Saul Tchernichowsky | Armin T. Wegner | Theodor Lessing | Mascha Kaléko | Joseph Klausner | David Frankfurter | Nahum Goldmann | Kurt Hoffmann | Hugo Bergmann | Albert Ehrenstein Most Famous Visitors* * based on number of Wikipedia entry language versions 1 2 9 23 39 200 700+ 1,189 24,000+ REVISITING THE PAST
