New year, good time to do an update post on the ADM8 Database project.
The last year (well, really since the fall of 2019) was a good time for the ADM8 Database Project. We had Larry help out with a lot of transcribing of documents, which means that we’re now up to 155 live reports in the database, covering much of ADM 8 volume 1.
We were also able to work with plugins so that the live reports have photos at the bottom, and also maps for all the deployment reports- as well as for looking up individual ships and persons. This is excellent progress, and means that there is sufficient data for actual research to happen.
Its also a good time to set forth the goals for the next year for the project
1. Finish transcribing all the “Deployment Reports” from both Vol 1 and 2. This will hopefully get done the vast majority of the reports. Thankfully it seems that ADM8 is much more consistent in its format than ADM8 1 was.
2. This also means we have to do a bunch of coding and things so that we can deal with different weird formatting and things. (For example, dealing with reports that have more than one Captain per ship).
3. Work on the mapping plugin- I need to figure out a way that can have both pins of different colours, but also have attactive pins. That might mean using something other than leaflet.
4. Work on the code for transcribing fleet lists. I already have two in the database, so it’ll be some version of duplicating/adding/removing lines.
I think these are a reasonable set of goals for this year. I’m also beginning work on an article/research note which will actually use the ADM 8 database as one of the tools.
