Journal

Multiple Views

Because Ross wrote his Journal sequentially in notebooks, numbered the pages, and indexed the contents, it has been possible to write XSL programs that generate different logical views of the information in the Journal and Index. There are eight different views. They are summarized in the following table:

Together, these densely interlinked views make it easy to browse purposefully through Ross's Journal and Index.

Bookshelf View

This view shows the spines of all 25 volumes.

• Clicking on a volume takes you to the corresponding Volume view.
• This page also contains images of the covers of each volume.

Volume View

This view contains thumbnail images of all pages in a volume. Index keywords are listed above any pages that Ross indexed. This view makes it easy to review all of Ross's index entries chronologically and to find pages that contain interesting diagrams.

• Yellow and green backgrounds convey whether keywords are associated with the left or right page.
• Clicking on a thumbnail takes you to the image of that journal page.
• Clicking on a blue keyword takes you to that keyword's entry in the index.
• There are also links to jump to the next or previous volume.

Index Page

Ross's original 860-card alphabetical index has been turned into a single HTML page that contains over 10,000 links to the images of the journal pages, index cards, and to other related views. Because it is all on one page, you can search through the entire index (all primary and secondary index terms) in your browser by pressing Control-F. The index page is 1 MB, which means that there can be a delay loading it.

This page contains two views: A keyword cloud and the alphabetically sorted index entries. To illustrate the different views, the following sample screenshots focus on the keyword Entropy, but these views also exist for the other 677 keywords.

Keyword Cloud View

At the top of the index page, the Keyword Cloud contains all 678 keywords.

• The size of each keyword reflects how many page references it has. Hovering the mouse pointer over a keyword displays the exact number.
• Clicking on a keyword jumps you, within the Index Page, down to that keyword's index entry.
• Clicking on a blue letter jumps you, within the Index Page, to the top of the cloud.

Keyword Index View

Every keyword has an entry in the index that contains the complete transcription of Ross's original index cards.

This is the core of the index. From here, you have direct access to all related journal pages, references, and other views.

• Page numbers are shown in blue if you haven't visited them recently. Any pages that you have already viewed are shown in red if they are still in your browser's cache. Hovering the mouse pointer over a page number displays the year that Ross wrote that page. Clicking on the page number displays the image of that Journal Page. Where Ross specified page ranges, for example 1234-36, they are shown as a set of page numbers { 1234 1235 1236 }, which has advantages when the pages that you have already looked at are shown in red.
• References to publications are shown in gold. Hovering the mouse pointer over a golden link displays the author, title, and publication details. Clicking on a reference link takes you to the complete list of references, which is available sorted both numerically and alphabetically by author.
• Cross-references to other index keywords are shown in green. Clicking on a green keyword takes you to that keyword's entry on the Index Page... unless it was one of the early cards that Ross reused or removed. These dead links have not been deleted, since their presence provides insight into index keywords that Ross once used, but later abandoned.
• Terms or names that are shown in grey link to Wikipedia articles. These links have hover text that can help to disambiguate between different people or possible interpretations of terms.
• Each index entry also has links to the Cards and Thumbs views for that keyword, and a link that takes you back up, within the Index Page, to the Keyword Cloud.

Keep in mind that Ross did not index the contents of every page, so there are inevitably many journal entries that can only be found by luck or by systematically reading every page in a time period of interest.

Keyword Card View

In this view, the original index cards for a particular keyword are displayed with the transcription under them, on which the digital index and all keyword links are based.

• Above the card, the Previous and Next links take you to this same view for the alphabetically preceding or following keywords.
• There are also links to the Keyword Thumbs view and the Keyword Index entry for this keyword, and a link back to the Keyword Cloud.
• The transcription under the card is identical to the entry in the Keyword Index view, and the links behave in the same way.

This view is useful for checking index text that has been transcribed in [square brackets] because either we couldn't read it properly, or we couldn't type it accurately, or both. If you notice an error in the transcription of an index card, please click the 'Send Index Error Feedback' link for that card to email us, so that we can correct it.

Keyword Thumbs View

This view is particularly powerful, it contains thumbnail images of all the pages that were indexed for a particular keyword. The images are sorted chronologically, and are grouped by year. This view reveals how themes weave through the Journal, and it is ideal for investigating Ross's work one keyword at-a-time. It is the best view to use to identify when Ross first started working on a particular topic, and to identify the years in which he was more or less actively working on the topic. It is probably the best example of a new and useful information projection that was not available to Ross using his card index.

• Yellow and green backgrounds convey whether keywords are associated with the left or right page.
• The primary keyword (Entropy) is in red, which makes it easier to find and read the corresponding second level keywords.
• Listed above each thumbnail in blue are all the other keywords that each page was indexed for.
• Clicking on a keyword takes you to that keyword's entry on the Index Page.
• Clicking on a thumbnail takes you to the image of that journal page.
• Above each year, the Previous and Next links take you to this same view for the alphabetically preceding or following keywords.
• There are also links to the Keyword Card view and the Keyword Index entry for this keyword, and a link back to the Keyword Cloud.

Journal Pages View

This view contains the images of Ross's Journal pages.

After the image of the journal page has finished loading, it is resized to fit the width of your browser's window.

• To change the zoom level of the page view, either click on the top of the journal page image (when a zoom-graphic is faded in), or use the drop-down list to select between fitting 1-page or 2-pages to the width of the window, or displaying the page at 100% resolution (currently 1900 pixels wide).
• Across the very top of the page are a row of links that have pop-up hints to clarify their purpose.
• To jump to a particular page, select the page-jump box, replace the current page number (3368) with the page number that you want, and press Enter.
• For more screen space, click the Remove Frames link to get rid of the navigation frame. You can get the navigation frame back again by clicking any Home link.
• The yellow block contains the following information about the left and right hand pages:
  • The page number
  • The volume number (which links to the appropriate Volume View)
  • If known, the exact date that Ross wrote the page, otherwise the year. Clicking on it takes you to that date in the Timeline View
  • If known, the place where Ross was when he wrote the page.
  • If the pages were indexed, the index terms are listed for each page. Click on a blue keyword to view that keyword's entry in the index. These keywords are especially useful if you are reading or quickly flipping through the journal pages, because they tend to provide a sufficient summary of the pages' contents to decide whether you actually want to read Ross's hand-written text, or whether you want to flip more pages in search of entries that are closer to your areas of interest. If you are mostly flipping pages without reading Ross's writing, using the volume view will be much more efficient (click the Volume number link).
• When your mouse pointer is on the left or right page margin, a page-turn graphic is faded in (not shown above). Click it to turn to the previous or next page.

From July 1941, on page 0963, Ross started writing a summary at the end of each chunk. He also often punctuated changes of topic with a visual doodle, which helps to find where entries begin and end.

Timeline View

This view lists all dated journal pages. It is useful if you want to find pages that were written on or around a particular date. If known, the place is also listed where Ross was when he wrote the page, which makes this the best view for seeing where Ross was and when.

By now you can guess how the links work.

I'm sorry that it took so long to explain all that, but if you've read all the way down to here without giving up, you'll probably want to finally take a look at the Index.