Hi there! In this project I will be exploring “Linked Jazz” and comparing it to project 19, which explored philosophy articles. In “Linked Jazz” the material collected is meant to connect history and figures in Jazz together using linked data and creating a network diagram.
In this diagram there are more interactive aspects that users can explore. This makes the data that someone can extract from the graph more useful. Information that can be extracted from the graph includes pictures, videos, audio recordings, information on each person, interview transcriptions, and connections to other jazz figures.
Groups of 8-10 musicians often means that this group is more on the outskirts or a part of a more contained group of artists. An example I found of this is Freddie Green and the people who he interacted with. In this case the other members of the jazz communnity that Freddie Green interacted with are very small. This is more uncommon within this graph but not impossible.
This network diagram allows users to filter the graph based on gender demographics. If you click on the gender mode at the top of the page the graph will color code, so men are blue, and women are red. This makes determining gender factors much easier with gender clearly being stated on each person’s circle.
Race cannot be directly searched but looking at each individual figure there is a short account of their life and career, a picture of them, and a link to their Wikipedia page. From all these items a user could determine a musician’s race, this is flawed as Wikipedia is not a reliable source and one may have to assume someone’s race. However, this is better than the philosophy network where there was no way to easily identify an author’s race or gender. Seniority within the field is not easily searchable, however each musician’s birth date is written in their bio so a user could use that to determine figures who are more experienced or older.
The information this resource offers to a newcomer is useful as it is a simple way to connect many jazz figures together. For an expert, some of this information may already be known to them but they are able to use the dynamic mode function to help with their research and add to the network. This function can link musicians together and make the relationships between people more interconnected.
A dynamic network like this one is much more useful and interactive than the philosophy network from project 19, but the basis of the two are the same. As mentioned in project 19, a structure like the philosophy network would be helpful to visually construct a historiography where various articles are in conversation with each other. Information that might be included would be authors, their publications, dates of publication, and how what they are saying about a specific topic which would link them together. A structure like the “Linked Jazz” network would be useful for creating a map of people involved in a movement just like jazz or any other one. This would include all the same information as the “Linked Jazz” project with a background on the figures, pictures, videos, dates, and links to each other based on beliefs, actions, or references.
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