On the Topic of Neatline...

    Neatline is an incredibly useful tool with which readers can visualize the events that take place within a novel, assuming that the novel is nonfiction, that is. Not only can it show the extent of the distance spanned in a story, but it also functions as a chronology of key events that occur, and how they relate to each other geographically. I can only imagine that using it for the research project for Kamala Shamsie's Home Fire would have been incredibly useful for getting a sense of where events took place beyond the general areas of Britain and the Middle East. 

    Learning Neatline was fairly simple, although not all of its functionality was explained. For the most part, using Neatline seems intuitive, and its capabilities are labeled clearly. Maybe dolling up exhibits is more difficult, but in general, completing cohesive maps with Neatline is extremely doable, though I'm uncertain how using it for a research project would function.

    Part of me regrets not using Neatline for Home Fire, and I could easily see how it would be done. The 1939 bombing referenced in Home Fire was a single instance of "Plan S," which saw attacks on innumerable key structures in Britain from 1939 to 1940. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. A timeline of each attack along with a description of damage dealt would have been incredibly useful in seeing the extent to which the IRA attacks impacted Britain, and there would have been a significant number of points on the map to explore. One difficulty that would have arose is that, at least in the MLA database, there are nearly no articles specifically about Plan S, let alone a cohesive list of each attack, their location, and their effects.