This is the working space for Literature in Context, an XML project that seeks to provide open-access, reliably-sourced, and collaboratively-constructed annotated editions of British and American literature of the long 18th century for classroom use. This project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and developed by faculty at The University of Virginia and Marymount University.
- Grant project narrative: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByaOE4YnBMjNY3hwRlFqejBiT0E
- full-text searchability with keyword in context *
- relational searchability *
- easy export of individual/selected texts — to web, to PDF, to epub *
- pop-ups for annotations, with ability to render them as footnotes in print/PDF *
- Distinguish between kinds of annotations: 1.) basic popup annotations and 2.) larger, more essay-like contextualizations or headnotes that can be selected for inclusion into coursepack (*)
- format selected texts for coursepack/anthologization (citability/page numbers/source info) *
- metadata for export to Zotero, catalog ingestion *
- media-rich: ability to read different kinds of formats and display them properly (desktop and mobile) *
- ability to include facsimile page images *
- ability to list contributor information *
- version control/automation from a central repository *
- ability for others to contribute texts for review and inclusion in the anthology (not necessary now, but a goal for the future)
- ability to integrate hypothes.is, Annotation Studio or some other annotation platform (not necessary now, but a possible goal for the future)
- Open Anthology: http://virginia-anthology.org
- Novels in Context: http://nic.cerosia.org
- Github repository: http://github.com/tonyahowe/LiC
Best practices? We have a couple of concerns. 1.) Texts have authorial annotations, so we need to include those. But we also have editorial annotations, so we need to distinguish those from editorial annotations. 2.) Our projects were developed at different times, and so use different encoding. What is the best way? And 3.) which is the best way, given that we also want to incorporate media into our editorial annotations?
Currently, we are working on an eXist install with github connectivity. Texts to work with:
- behn-oroonoko.xml
- pope-lock.xml
- wheatley-poems.xml
- shelley-frankenstein.xml
- finch-nightingale.xml
Manifold is great for straightforward group annotate-able stand-alone texts, and the “collections” feature might be useful for us. However, out of the box it doesn’t allow:
- page images (at least, from the html or xml; see the Frankenstein TP as an example. The [page] link that ought to work in the HTML doesn’t, and the added resource was just that--added)
- selecting-->coursepacks/anthologies
- working directly from/with the TEI files. (The Frankenstein text is created from the HTML that Oxygen created when I transformed from XML)
These three things seem to be really important for us, and I’m not sure we want to give up these goals. On the other hand, Manifold offers a beautiful reading interface, crowdsourced annotations, and the possibility of building the reading text online.
Can Performant hack Manifold or create plugins to allow us to do what we want to do? If not, it really seems that an XML database is a good way to go, because it is made to work directly with the TEI files. There is little of the “middleman” here, outside of hiring someone to create an XSL that works for us. What we lose here is the group annotation feature.
We need to rename all our files to the standard lastname-shorttitle.xml format. This should also be the xml:id of the file, noted in the TEI header.
What will our core TEI look like, for prose, poetry, drama? We’ve agreed on TEI level-4 for libraries, but there is still a lot of variation there. Some issues:
How we create or come by the TEI will have an important role to play . For instance, the xml files from 18th Connect use (anonymous blocks) for every line of the text. The American Verse Project out of UM looks different. So, too, do texts from the Text Creation Partnership/Oxford Text Archive (and texts very widely within those massive, linked projects). Here are some samples:
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Finch Miscellany Poems (1713), via 18th Connect: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fAwGp4b2kxadR2ghjoo1knvWobF2-BEP
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Wheatley’s Poems on Several Occasions (1773), via AVP: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hjasZUmRem2SR_K_RaLW9JZwDgPNWiOV
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Behn, The Rover, from the Oxford Text Archive: http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/2006
It would be nice (necessary?) to have a custom DTD, and make that available for project participants. I have generated one from Frankenstein and Finch’s poem “To the Nightingale,” but I don’t know if it is strictly valid. The TEI-lite schema doesn’t validate these files in Oxygen. Chris might know more about this!!
Tonya's files use both XML and a plugin called tooltipster that produces popups in eXist-- see http://nic.cerosia.org/finch-nightingale or finch-nightingale.xml on github. John's files have been using a WordPress plug in, developed for his project, that allows you to import files in TEI into a WordPress page and have them display annotations. It's fairly rudimentary, though, with lots of refinement needed to be a viable long-term solution.
- person, persName, author ...
Standard TEI header should be in place now (8/1/18).
How will we indicate the variety of sources from which this digital edition has been constructed? In most cases, there will be multiple witnesses/physical sources--a book, an 18th Connect text encountered via TypeWright, a Project Gutenberg plaintext, an XML or SGML file from another project, even a hard copy that was used for reading. Can we manipulate element in the header? See above re: validity.
What should a baseline be? How much variation will we allow? Complete sentences, attributive phrases, reputable sources both popular-scholarly and scholarly? Accessibility? Citation and quotation? Linking within the annotations?
Some annotations can be simple and brief (short definitions of words no longer in use, or identifying usage that is no longer current). Others would benefit from longer, perhaps media-rich (photographs, paintings, sound files) annotation. At still other points, an extended "annotation" equivalent to side bars in print textbooks might be desirable/helpful (Franklin's Autobiography with an account of eighteenth-century printing conventions and technology, or the status of the post office, etc.)