Sanudo's Diary

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Our Github Page Link to Google Doc Diaries Frontend

Introduction

Main task is to present the named entities in diary in an interactive way, e.g. map-based website. georeference the useful name entities with Venice places.

For the ultimate goal, it is to provide an immersive experience that allows users to explore the diary in a spatially interactive format, deepening their engagement with the historical narrative.

About Sanudo

Sanudo

Sanudo's Background Information

Status	aristocrat
Occupation	Historian

Question: Where did Sanudo live? According to my knowledge, he "seat in front of his home at the sqaure" to note down every thing around him. Maybe we can make his living house as the entry point.

Sanudo's Diary

The Diaries of Marin Sanudo represent one of the most comprehensive daily records of events ever compiled by a single individual in early modern Europe. They offer insights into various aspects of Venetian life, from "diplomacy to public spectacles, politics to institutional practices, state councils to public opinion, mainland territories to overseas possessions, law enforcement to warfare, the city's landscape to the lives of its inhabitants, and from religious life to fashion, prices, weather, and entertainment".[2]

English selection & comment of Diary

Transforming Sanudo’s index (1496 - 1533)

Diary Background Information

Diary Duration	1496-1533	37
Quantity	58 Volumes	around 40000 pages
Content Style	deal with any matter	regardless of its ‘importance’

"...the continuity of events and institutions collapses into the quotidian. ...Unreflecting, pedantic, and insatiable, he aimed "to seek out every occurrence, no matter how slight," for he believed that the truth of events could only be grasped through an abundance of facts. 18 He gathered those facts in the chancellery of the Ducal Palace and in the streets of the city, transcribing official legislation and ambassadorial dispatches, reporting popular opinion and Rialto gossip"[1]

Project Timeline & Milestones

2024/10/10

• Conducted background information research and clarified project goals.
• Reviewed related articles, gaining insight into Sanudo's diary.
• Goals:
  • Obtain diary text and extract place names.
  • Match person names with place names.
  • Link named entities to specific diary content.
• Planned integration with the Venice interactive map frontend.

2024/11/14

• Midterm presentation completed.
• Summary:
  • Current Progress:
    • Data processing: Data obtaining, index extraction, column extraction
    • Filtering: Venice-name verification pipeline
  • Future Plan:
    • Handle data discrepancies
    • Extract people names associated with place entities
    • Embed information into a map
• Next Steps:
  • Week 10: Extract people names associated with place entities
  • Week 11: Create GIS-compatible format for pipeline output
  • Week 12 (optional): Test integration with Venice front-end
  • Week 13 (optional): Add context for name-place pairing

Project Process

We identified three APIs which we could use to locate whether an entity exists in Venice or not. These were: Nominatim (OpenStreetMap), WikiData, and Geonames. We settled on Nominatim as the chief API, since it was the easiest to use and offered the most consistent results. Thus, we created a pipeline to extract place entities from the Sanudo's index and use the Nominatim API to search if the entity exists in Venice, and store the co-ordinates if so.

Place Entity

The following is the schema to define a place entity. The database consists of three tables, as below:

1. places

Column Name	Data Type	Not Null	Default Value	Primary Key	Explanation
id	INTEGER	YES	NULL	YES	A unique identifier for each place in the database.
place_name	TEXT	YES	NULL	NO	The name of the place (e.g., city, town, landmark).
latitude	REAL	YES	NULL	NO	The latitude of the place in decimal degrees (geographical coordinate).
longitude	REAL	YES	NULL	NO	The longitude of the place in decimal degrees (geographical coordinate).

2. alternative_names

Column Name	Data Type	Not Null	Default Value	Primary Key	Explanation
id	INTEGER	YES	NULL	YES	A unique identifier for each alternative name entry.
place_id	INTEGER	YES	NULL	NO	The ID of the place from the `places` table, linking alternative names to places.
alternative_name	TEXT	YES	NULL	NO	An alternative or historical name for the place.

3. place_indexes

Column Name	Data Type	Not Null	Default Value	Primary Key	Explanation
id	INTEGER	YES	NULL	YES	A unique identifier for each place index entry.
place_id	INTEGER	YES	NULL	NO	The ID of the place from the `places` table, linking indexes to places.
place_index	INTEGER	YES	NULL	NO	An index or reference number associated with the place (e.g., historical, geographical, or catalog number).

References

Frontend references:
https://pov-dev.up.railway.app/ (development version)
https://pov.up.railway.app/

Interactive(?) book:
https://valley.newamericanhistory.org/

Document references:
[1] Finlay, Robert. “Politics and History in the Diary of Marino Sanuto.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4, 1980, pp. 585–98. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2860688. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
[2]Image source: https://evolution.veniceprojectcenter.org/evolution.html
[3]Ferguson, Ronnie. “The Tax Return (1515) of Marin Sanudo: Fiscality, Family, and Language in Renaissance Venice.” Italian Studies 79, no. 2 (2024): 137–54. doi:10.1080/00751634.2024.2348379.