Kempleel Blog 1: Aaron Thomas: The Caribbean Journal of a Royal Navy Seaman

The University of Miami (Florida) houses amongst their special collections the journal of an eighteenth century British seaman, the titular Aaron Thomas. As part of an independent study project, Grad student Elizabeth H. Locke has create a website digitizing the journal it what turns out to be an extremely in-depth look at a single object, as opposed to an entire collection. However, the project itself contains a frustrating minimum of images and documentation.

Collection Principles: Minimal, no explanation of the choice of this particular object was given, however the site calls it a "unique and valuable document containing the thoughtful musings of an intelligent, moral man." However, the creation of the site is clearly intended to improve the accessability of an obscure, but interesting, primary source from the age of British naval dominance. The site includes a brief history of British interests in the Caribbean, and a bibliography of Thomas.

Metadata: Even more minimal. The original object's characteristics are covered in a paragraph, and there is no word about how one might access it physically. It does mention the site's original date (1999), it's last update (2005) and its providence under the umbrella of the Miami University libraries and the library's desire to "maintain this site and continue to add material as it becomes available."

Object Characteristics: Unlike other projects I've seen, this one, instead of simply scanning the book and putting up it's images, has 366 pages of the journal transcribed and on the site as text, with spelling, punctuation and forays into Portuguese intact. The object is broken into sections by date - there are 8 sections of two months each, ending with his death in Oct 1799. The site also includes 8 selected page scans in .jpg format, 412px × 513px, seemingly chosen for their interesting appearance but in no particular order.

Intended audience: Most likely historians or other students of eighteenth century history, particularly British naval history. The website contains a glossary and a selection of excerpts on diverse topics, pointing to an attempt to make it ore accesable to the public at large, I think. It also has a very brief links section with some ports to other eighteenth centruy digitization projects, museums, even a historical re-enactment society. As the website contains almost no information about the project of digiztization itself, or even an explaination of the images used, it seems unlikely that it was intended for archivists or others with an interest in preservation and accessability, or even serious scholars.