The Crowded Page was an effort to test a theory: can digital technology give scholars a better understanding of the intricate network of relationships that bring works of art and literature into being? Can data mining and visualization tools reveal what might not be readily apparent through traditional methods of research?
At this page, we have archived our first attempt to use digital tools to create a proof-of-concept to study the social networks of literary and artistic communities. We created databases that identify the relationships between the artists and writers in these communities, then we used the data structures and methodologies of the Semantic Web to infer the larger patterns and networks of relationships within these groups. After that we created interactive visualizations of these networks, and finally we created a white paper to explain our findings.
The datasets are focused on two discrete creative communities: the group located around Charles Pfaff's beer cellar in mid-nineteenth-century New York City; and the Greenwich Village "Bohemians" of the 1910s.