This project uses place names extracted from the inventory of an archival collection to visualize the geographic locations of one branch of the United States Presbyterian missionary movement in 19^th century Korea. Because of the time period and geography of the materials used, I encountered several challenges to my work.

My goal for this course has been two-fold:

1. To learn how information visualization tools, such as Tableau, Gephi, and now CartoDB, when used with archival finding aids, can reveal new knowledge and understanding of those collections, and
2. Avoid copyright concerns and questions by using data from the finding aids only and not the collection materials themselves.

This collection is very large and extensive and does not yet have a formal finding aid. Furthermore, the most current inventory exists only as a text document and not in any structured data format. It is also not yet available online. Thus, extracting data and restructuring it has been time- and labor-intensive.

The Moffett Korea Collection has been given to Princeton Theological Seminary Special Collections over many years. Most of it has been inventoried, but materials continue to be accessioned today. The collection spans more than 100 years of the life and ministries of Samuel Austin Moffett, his son Samuel Hugh Moffett, and their wives, family members, and colleagues. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence and personal files of both Samuel Moffetts. It documents the origins and growth of Christianity in Korea during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, with emphasis on the Presbyterian Church in Korea.

The collection includes many photographs from the 1880s through the 1940s and 1950s. Photos display churches, hospitals, and schools begun by the Moffetts as well as the life and culture of Korean people in their towns and villages from various time periods. Many sites and locations either no longer exist or have been renamed. Determining the precise location where a given photograph was taken is difficult using existing geo-location tools and software. Many buildings and their records were destroyed in the Korean War, 1950-1953.

First, I went through the collection inventory and identified place names. I copied these into an Excel spreadsheet, categorizing each as a church, school, hospital, governmental district, or site, such as a river, lake, or park. I started to enter dates, but quickly realized dates were few and most were uncertain. I then entered the place names into the online tool, findlatitudeandlongitude.com. Early place names pulled from the collection inventory often differed slightly or considerably from current names used in online maps. To confirm the new name and accurately determine geographic coordinates of each place in question required some research.

Once the data was entered consistently and accurately in the spreadsheet, I imported it into a CartoDB map project. There I tried several basemap displays, using the Change basemap button in the lower left corner. I had hoped to use the Custom basemap option and upload a historical map of Korea from the Library of Congress general map collection. The result was a tiled effect and unusable, so I settled on the Nokia Terrain Day basemap.

Using the wizard tool on the right sidebar of CartoDB, I colorized the site categories, applying purple to churches, red to government districts, blue to hospitals, orange to schools, and green to sites and parks. I then completed a legend with title and categories. Clicking on each map site will display a point info window with category, latitude, longitude, and location. Most data points are grouped in Seoul and Pyongyang, so the user must zoom in to each city to see all of the points there.

I had hoped to add images from the collection to each point info window, but the collection donors have not yet given permission to make the full collection available online. As a temporary compromise, I added one image already publicly available on the Seminary library website. I completed the map with a title, adjusting the title font size and placement.

 

The map reveals the distance covered by the Moffett Korea missionary campaign and the lasting impact the Moffetts had on the Korean people. Many institutions started by the Moffetts in the 1890s still stand today. As noted above, however, others do not, especially in the north.

Future work on this map project could include identifying the best format for a historic map as basemap; obtaining permission to post images with each info window; and researching dates for each site, then creating a date span slide with the filter tool.

The resulting map is an attractive visual representation of the Moffett Korea collection and mission work in Korea. My biggest take-away with this project is the challenge of using historical geographical information confidently and accurately in a contemporary representation. Dates are ambiguous, spelling of institutional and place names change, and entire villages disappear off the map. Most importantly, any use of collection material, whether images or text, depends on securing necessary permissions. And that process can take time and negotiation.