MaGMa and Digital Humanities

Written Sources

In MaGMa, historical written sources are core. We work with hundreds of documents produced between the early 16th and the late 19th century mainly by colonial agents. These include official and personal letters, ship logs, and royal decrees.

Handling such a large and diverse corpus presents several challenges when it comes to organizing, analyzing, and visualizing information. To address this, we have chosen to gather and process these sources with a digital, relational database environment using Nodegoat — a web-based data management platform specifically designed for humanities research. Nodegoat allows us to structure complex historical data, create relationships between entities (people, places, objects, texts, or events, amongst others), and generate dynamic visualizations.

Working in a digital environment to process historical sources offers multiple advantages for MaGMa:

• A Collaborative shared “Research Space”
  Nodegoat gives us a transparent and consistent workflow, which is particularly important for a growing, interdisciplinary team. It helps everyone to understand the process, contribute confidently, and know where we stand at each step.
• Better Monitoring and Continuity
  The platform makes it easier to track progress in the analysis of sources: how much has been done, where we’re stuck, who might need support.
• More Control over Our Data
  It allows us to keep track of how many sources we are working with, what types they are, and from which periods. This leads to better internal coordination, avoids duplication of work, and helps us meet FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).
• Visualization Tools
  We can visualize the data in innovative ways — maps, timelines, networks — that help us not only to communicate our findings, but also to see the data differently and generate new questions.
• A Learning Opportunity
  By working directly with a digital environment, the team gains hands-on experience with digital tools and data thinking. MaGMa becomes a testing ground for critically engaging with digital humanities — a chance to learn, assess, and decide how useful these tools can be.
• Building a Legacy
  Finally, this approach ensures that MaGMa will leave a tangible, reusable legacy beyond its publications — a dataset, a platform, and a digital environment that others can build on in future research.
• Making Spanish written documentation available to non-Spanish speakers
  MaGMa will bring information in Spanish written sources to the CHamoru communities following initiatives already conducted by previous scholars within the Microneasian Area Research Centre in Guahan. In our case, the information will refer to CHamoru everyday life and resistance.