# The Descriptor Project

The Descriptor project is a subset of WALK with the goal of describing
the partnership's collective resources, providing some pathfinders to
help the historians of the future interpret what is (and is not) going
on in the data. This includes two main methods.

## Descriptive historical analysis

The goal of this section is to describe the collection in a more detailed
way than previously. The reality is that many of the collections include
vast amounts of data on a broad topic that includes resources that have
gained and lost prominence over time. Further, sometimes a technical issue
results in the loss of data that may influence analysis.

## Network Analysis

Social network analysis is a familiar way that researchers try to uncover
trends in the dynamics of a web-system. Unfortunately, the networks for
Web Archives can be so large as to limit the ability for valid interpretation
of the data. We are going to attempt to provide some guidance using common
filters and visualisation techniques to highlight some of the most important
aspects of the networks.

In addition to the analysis of the datasets, we are also looking to build
methods for analyzing WARCbase outputs, that can later be included in the 
walk-compare tool, which currently focusses on bivariate rather than 
univariate analysis of networks..