Visualising the Uncertain in Heritage Collections: Understanding, Exploring and Representing Uncertainty in the First World War British Unit War Diaries
Keywords:
Uncertainty, representation, visualisation, cultural heritage, collections, data.Abstract
This paper argues that cultural heritage data is inherently ambiguous and may involve different types and levels of uncertainty. Using a variety of examples based on The National Archives (UK)’s Unit War Diaries collection unveiling stories of the British Army and its units on the Western Front in the First World War, we discuss the ways in which visualisation can help us approach heritage collections as data, enabling their visual representation in a constructive and informed way. It also aims to open up the discussion about the theoretical and methodological challenges that uncertainty, which is often hidden, can bring to the understanding of ambiguous heritage data.In brief, we discuss ways in which uncertainty appears in cultural heritage collections, either as something innate in the collections or resulting from the data extraction and narrative construction process. We identify three main types of uncertainty: inaccuracy, incompleteness and ambiguity, with the latter then subdivided into inconsistency, imprecision and non-specificity. Distinguishing, considering and quantifying these different types of uncertainty can help understand the level of confidence that we can have in narratives, source data and the extraction process. This can then enhance the discoverability of cultural heritage collections that involve high levels of uncertainty.In this way, we suggest that cultural heritage organisations should strategically focus on improving the understandability and discoverability of their digital collections by exposing and embracing uncertainty in cultural heritage collections and by innovating in its visual presentation to researchers and the public.References
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