Methodology

The Witches in Early Modern England Project (WEME) is based on Uszkalo's ongoing work in the ealry English period. WEME was a use case in the much larger undertaking headed by Dr. John Unsworth (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Dr. Martin Mueller (Northwestern University), under the name of Metadata Offer New Knowledge (MONK) (http://www.monkproject.org/). Co-applicants Ruecker and Radzikowska were also members of the MONK research team.

The research will be done in three phases. In the first and second phases, we will design and develop an experimental interface to enable scholars to use existing open-source text mining tools with witchcraft trial documents.

The second phase of the project will involve the mapping of witch texts which can be cross referenced with full display of digitized texts, illustrations, and woodcuts from the texts. The WEME Browser will allow results from the analytic routines to be redisplayed on the map, allowing for more accurate and detailed mapping of text and cross textual elements, such as the proliferation of familiars across time, text, and parish. To gain access to the trial documents, we have already secured permission from Cornell Library, the TCP and EEBO to use their digital texts in this research and the University of Exeter to use their digital maps.

The third phase of the project will consist of iterative prototype development and testing. Testing with a user group throughout the process of development becomes critical, in particular when a project attempts to make use of novel metaphors. We will recruit 10-15 participants for user study, using undergraduate arts students. We will use a think-aloud protocol and semi-structured interviews with audio recording transcription with emergent encoding for themes (Glaser 1992; Glaser & Strauss 1967).