About this Project
This site was generated using CollectionBuilder-GH, a project to create a free and simple digital collection using GitHub Pages. CollectionBuilder is an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites, developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
As part of my work with the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries this year, I have shared CollectionBuilder with faculty and students through instructional workshops and consultations. Because these small projects primarily use the simplified CB-GH template, I wanted to test the template’s customization, and my own rusty Javascript abilities, with an example dataset. (If you’re curious about just how rusty my web dev skills are, you can follow the erratic trajectory of this project’s source code through its commits.)
My historical research meanders through diverse historic milieus, exploring the ways in which technological and material change has reshaped social experience. A few years ago in graduate school, I stumbled upon the mariner’s astrolabe (utilitarian cousin of the ornate planispheric astrolabe), curious enough on its own but made even more compelling for the professional dramas surrounding its manufacture. The hard work of cataloguing and documenting these objects was started by D. W. Waters and A. Stimson, research greatly expanded by Filipe Castro and the ShipLAB team at Texas A&M University and Universidade de Coimbra. Their compiled list, from The Marine Astrolabes Catalogue (2020), was a significant reference for my own research. I’ve changed the metadata structure somewhat, and added some fields I found useful for comparison in my own research, but this list forms the foundation for the object list and metadata used in this online project. For the most up-to-date information, I would encourage academics to reach out to the folks at ShipLAB directly; this site is to be used for educational purposes only.
The title of this project comes from Francisco Rodrigues’s “Chapter To Explain How You Should Navigate By Shadows,” in “The Book of Francisco Rodrigues: Rutter of a Voyage in the Red Sea, Nautical Rules, Almanack and Maps, Written and Drawn in the East before 1515,” trans. and ed. Armando Cortesão, in The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires and The Book of Francisco Rodrigues, Volume II (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944), 304.