Thursday, June 23, 2016

Louise Brooks: data mining, visualization and the Media History Digital Library

Arclight is a data mining and visualization tool for film and media history that allow users to analyze millions of pages of digitally scanned magazines (notably film and trade publications) and newspapers for trends related to a chosen subject. I searched "Louise Brooks."

This graph represents my results.  It shows what we already know, that more articles mentioning Louise Brooks appeared in 1926 and then 1927, peaking in 1928. The decline in mostly American press attention began in 1929 and continued into the 1930s until the period between 1936 and 1938, when Brooks experienced a brief revival. The 1940s and 1950s marked a period of obscurity. The 1960s marked a period of rediscovery.

There were 2 hits in 1924, and 15 in 1925. There were 173 hits in 1926, 221 in 1927, and 259 in 1928. In 1929 there were 146 hits, followed by 50 in 1930. In 1931, there were 54 hits, followed by 19 in 1932, and 7 in 1933.






Arclight  is a collaboration among interdisciplinary researchers at Concordia University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Project Arclight enables the study of 20th century American media through comparisons across time and space. I encourage every Louise Brooks scholar to check it out. You won't be bored, unlike Louise.


Check out this video about the Media History Digital Library.

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