Bibliography

Massai S. Redefining the Role of the Editor for the Electronic Medium: A New Internet Shakespeare Edition of Edward III. Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature. 2004;9.
Abstract:

In this essay, Sonia Massai discusses the critical and contemplative decisions behind creating a working model for assembling an electronic edition by drawing on her personal experiences developing the Internet Shakespeare Edition of Edward III. Massai observes the similarities and differences between print and digital edition beginning with the organization or layout of material. While a print edition necessitates an order, an electronic edition possesses the ability to obscure this hierarchy. Also, the "electronic medium not only de-centres the modern edition but also the traditional role of the editor, by being intrinsically open to collaboration." Massai asserts that the electronic medium possesses the "versatility and multiplicity" to overcome the challenges of readability and audience when compiling an edition. Finally, electronic editing can shift and shape author attribution.

Abstract:

In this review, Nicola Harwood approaches Early English Books Online (EEBO) from the unique perspective of a legal researcher. While Harwood acknowledges that EEBO is "not strictly a legal resource," the database does provides information for legal historians and is a " good example of how technology can be used to enhance access to rare and fragile resources." Harwood remarks that the database is fully searchable by multiple categories, including author, title, printer, publication, type of illustration, and subject headings. Each individual entry is then layered with detail from basic citation information through to scanned images. While the overall search facilities and help screens are good, Harwood does find faults in the lack of functionality when it comes to the images and the lack of visible, transcribed text or OCR.

Abstract:

King, Niebrzydowski, and Wyatt begin the article by addressing the challenges of defining Early Modern English drama and its relative exclusion from mainstream academics. King, Niebrzydowski, and Wyatt note that the authors published in this issue are committed to broadening the understanding of and attention paid to Early English drama. King, Niebrzydowski, and Wyatt also highlight the importance of acknowledging that these plays were never meant to be read but rather that the manuscripts are intimately tied to actual performance. King, Niebrzydowski, and Wyatt argue that performance remains the best " way to make medieval plays widely available." In close, the authors suggest that they have purposefully selected a diverse group of essays that, some cases, take incongruent approaches to the same work(s).

Abstract:

Lindquist and Wicht survey undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members at University of Colorado at Boulder to decipher the impact of Early English Books Online (EEBO) on the academic sphere. Despite being the first large electronic corpus, Lindquist and Wicht argue that little work has been on the impact of the resource. The authors of this article wanted to determine the likes, dislikes, challenges, and opportunities of EEBO. They conducted a survey of 30 undergraduates, 11 graduates, and 9 faculty in the spring 2005. Overall, undergraduates used EEBO to complete course assignments, graduates used EEBO either to complete course assignments or for independent research, and faculty members mostly used EEBO for individual research with a handle employing EEBO as a teaching resource. The most effective feature of EEBO was unanimously the downloading feature, which plays to the resource's improvement of access and efficiency over the UMI microfilms it is designed to replace. The EEBO online help function was the least effective. Instructors found that the electronic format of EEBO and the value of search ability made it a resource worth incorporating into the classroom.

Abstract:

Matthew Steggle begins with article by breaking down the benefits and drawbacks of the EEBO-TCP project. Steggle argues that the quality of transcription, illusion of comprehensiveness, and influence of remediation are all challenges. However, the (eventual) open access to the materials and the ability to measure/quantify literary queries make the project worthwhile. Steggle uses Shakespeare's Measure for Measure as a case study to illustrate the usefulness of EEBO-TCP. He asserts that the crux of Measure for Measure is the vast differences in various textual "interpretation(s) and emendations." EEBO-TCP helps to reconcile or add evidence to these debates through frequency searches, comparative research, variant forms searches. Steggle argues that EEBO-TCP "seems to give a new purchase on old textual problems" by showcasing what evidence is persuasive and providing access to writings beyond the canon.

Abstract:

McKitterick closely investigates the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) online. The article starts by recounting the creation of the ESTC as it emerged out of the Short Title Catalogue and the Wing catalogue. The development of a digital database was conceived in order to keep up with the ever-evolving resource as releasing regular updates in print proved to be a chimera. McKitterick argues that the ESTC has immense potential benefits to prompt new work and record new knowledge. However, the database is far from perfect. Bibliographical research, McKitterick points out, costs money and the incredible process of consultation, assembling, and checking the ESTC resource is time consuming. McKitterick works through a number of concrete examples to point out where the ESTC could improve and to demonstrate the challenges of working in the current system. While McKitterick does concede that the resource is valuable, he argues that it does not stand in as an authoritative guide or entry point for reliable statistical analysis.

Abstract:

My aim in this essay is to provide a categorical map to the landscape of digital resources available to enrich scholarship on Victorian literature and culture. But I also want to reflect for a moment on the general state of digital scholarly work within the larger institutional structures of our disciplines. For over a decade now, digital resources relevant to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture have been proliferating, becoming part of the way we live now as scholars and teachers. Yet reviews of such resources in standard channels have thus far been rare. There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs, all related primarily to the fact that digital projects have developed outside the well-settled infrastructure that has supported the academic book. This infrastructure is familiar to us, involving a network of institutions that includes publishers, libraries, scholarly societies, humanities departments, and academic journals like Victorian Literature and Culture. The scene of production of digital scholarship is, by contrast, variable and dynamic, involving experimental platforms, emergent collaborations, competing standards, rapidly-evolving technologies, and unfamiliar genres. Perhaps most crucially, digital scholarly resources in our field have only recently (with the advent of NINES) begun to receive systematic peer-review, of which post-publication reviews in academic journals have been a part. Because digital projects are more process than finished product (i.e., they are never “done” in the way a book is), they have tended to elude the reviewers. As a result of this unsettled environment, digital scholarship still abides in the shadows of the printed monographs, articles, and editions by which we have long measured achievement in the field.

Hunter M. British printed images to 1700. Art Libraries Journal. 2009;34:4-9.
Abstract:

Printed images provide vivid evidence concerning many facets of British history in the 16th and 17th centuries. Yet their exploitation has hitherto been inhibited partly by difficulties of access and partly by the lack of adequate means of searching for them by subject. In both respects, electronic technology is making major strides forward, as this article indicates with particular reference to a project aimed to make such material widely available in searchable, online form.

Abstract:

Printed images were ubiquitous in early modern Britain, and they often convey powerful messages which are all the more important for having circulated widely at the time. Yet, by comparison with printed texts, these images have been neglected, particularly by historians to whom they ought to be of the greatest interest. This volume helps remedy this state of affairs. Complementing the online digital library of British Printed Images to 1700, it offers a series of essays which exemplify the many ways in which such visual material can throw light on the history of the period.Ranging from religion to politics, polemic to satire, natural science to consumer culture, the collection explores how printed images need to be read in terms of the visual syntax understood by contemporaries, their full meaning often only becoming clear when they are located in the context in which they were produced and deployed. The result is not only to illustrate the sheer richness of material of this kind, but also to underline the importance of the messages which it conveys, which often come across more strongly in visual form than through textual commentaries.With contributions from many leading exponents of the cultural history of early modern Britain, including experts on religion, politics, science and art, the book's appeal will be equally wide, demonstrating how every facet of British culture in the period can be illuminated through the study of printed images.

Rasmussen E. Gilded Monuments and Living Records: A Note on Critical Editions in Print and Online. Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature. 2004;9.
Abstract:

Rasmussen's short essay addresses the relationship between mass/volume and quality when it comes to books. In general, Rasmussen argues, users do not expect the same quality or fidelity in an electronic text as they would a printed one. However, the Internet Shakespeare Editions project is working to shift this paradigm. By employing peer review and "rigorous editorial oversight," the Internet Shakespeare Editions put a quality product online. In fact, Rasmussen argues that the project's fidelity may actually surpass print editions because of its ability to correct human error with the click of a button.

Abstract:

Researchers in the humanities adopt a wide variety of approaches to their research. Their work tends to focus on texts and images, but they use and also create a wide range of information resources, in print, manuscript and digital forms. Like other researchers, they face multiple demands on their time, and so they find the ease and speed of access to digital resources very attractive: some of them note that they are reluctant on occasion to consult texts that require a trip to a distant library or archive. Nevertheless, none of the participants in our study is yet ready to abandon print and manuscript resources in favour of digital ones. Rather, they engage with a range of resources and technologies, moving seamlessly between them. Such behaviours are likely to persist for some time.This is reflected also in how researchers disseminate their research. The overwhelmingly dominant channels are the long-established ones such as journal articles, conferences and workshops, monographs and book chapters. We found only limited use – except among philosophers - of blogs and other social media. We noted the doubts expressed in other fields about quality assurance for users of such media, but also concerns about how best to present material that will be read by non-academic audiences.A key change in humanities research over the past 10-15 years has been the growth of more formal and systematic collaboration between researchers. This is a response in part to new funding opportunities, but also to the possibilities opened up by new technology. Over recent years there has also been a shift from the model under which technology specialists tell researchers how to do their research to more constructive engagement. Like other researchers, scholars in the humanities use what works for them, finding technologies and resources that fit their research, and resisting any pressure to use something just because it is new.But there is little evidence as yet of their taking full advantage of the possibilities of more advanced tools for text-mining, grid or cloud computing, or the semantic web; and only limited uptake of even simple, freely-available tools for data management and sharing. Rather, they manage and store information on their desktops and laptops, and share it with others via email. Barriers to the adoption and take up of new technologies and services include lack of awareness and of institutional training and support, but also lack of standardization and inconsistencies in quality and functionality across different resources. These make for delays in research, repetitive searching, and limitations on researchers’ ability to draw connections and relationships between different resources.

Abstract:

The 18th century had more than five thousand different forms of poetical miscellanies and verse collections written by multiple authors. In this article, Jennifer Batt provides an overview of the existing scholarship on these collections. Some of the ways this study studies the miscellanies is through: describing the different collections of the miscellanies; investigating what they reveal about the literary landscape and readers; exploring how this information aids researchers studying the 18th century; and tracking what these collections illuminate about the 18th century process of printing and book trade. The author refers to the Digital Miscellanies Index, an open online resource that stores information about the miscellanies and its metadata, as well as questions of copyright and author contribution, in order to serve as a guide to 18th century miscellanies poetic culture.

MacLean S-, Somerset A. From Patrons Web site to REED Online. Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England. 2011;24:25-37.
Abstract:

The article discusses the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project and its "Patrons and Performances Web Site" project. The article discusses the role of database management systems, mass online storage, and Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping in developing the REED project. Other topics include the history of the "Patrons and Performances Web Site," goals of the website to make medieval and renaissance theatre accessible, and efforts to turn publications into searchable datasets.

Abstract:

The concept of data in the humanistic academy carries a heavy cultural freight: as a reductionist yet efficient representation of complex textual significance. Far from being an invention of the digital age, this conception of the role of quantification has a prehistory whose terms continue to resonate in modern debates about digital editing and digitally mediated scholarship. This essay explores these terms and the anxieties they reflect, concluding that digital representation is no less textually and methodologically rich, and no less a production of knowledge, than its print counterpart.

Abstract:

The core aim of the Women Writers Project (WWP) is to improve teaching by making "learning more like research." WWP was created as an attempt to remedy the misrepresentation of women's writing, and to provide a tool for scholars researching and teaching women's writing before 1830. However, WWP turned out to accomplish more than this by displacing the idea of an anthology and creating a new "reading space in which the excerpt and the entire text, the individual item and the context, could be equally available to the student." WWP aims to move beyond the scope of a traditional, specific edition to relocate the reader to a space that is more general, accessible, and displays a wider range of resources.

Abstract:

The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) was established in 1999, as a collaborative project involving the University of Oxford, the University of Michigan, the commercial publisher ProQuest and the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The aim of the Text Creation Partnership was to create fully searchable XML-encoded transcriptions of the image sets of early printed books which form the basis for ProQuest's Early English Books Online. The Bodleian Libraries and the Oxford Internet Institute sought and received funding from JISC under their Digital Preservation and Curation programme for the SECT: Sustaining the EEBO-TCP Corpus in Transition project. The first stage of the SECT project was to carry out a benchmarking study of the impact and use of EEBO-TCP, using the OII’s Toolkit for the Impact of Digital Scholarly Resources (TIDSR), itself a JISC-funded initiative. The study concentrated primarily on the use and impact of EEBO-TCP in the UK. This report outlines the results of the TIDSR study, which will be used as a basis for the creation of practical recommendations for improvements to EEBO-TCP, focusing on how best to secure the long-term sustainability of the corpus.

Abstract:

The Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) is a website first launched in 1996 whose mission was to create an open access website that would make “scholarly, fully annotated texts of Shakespeare’s plays freely available in a form native to the medium of the Internet.” This article tackles the complications that arise when practically addressing ISE’s mission, such as the uncertainty of what exactly
a scholarly website, full annotation, and being “native to the medium of internet” constitutes in a rapidly changing digital environment. Michael Best resolves some of these uncertainties by focusing on ISE’s three main categories: text, performance, and context, where he demonstrates how the site has been built to ensure clarity and accuracy in navigation, the reliability of the information through well thought-out models, and the expansion of ISE’s information to keep it up to date with present productions and new materials related to Shakespeare. Best concludes by addressing the future of ISE that would develop the existing categories and types of available materials, as well as make their publishing platform available for use to other projects working on Shakespeare and plays by other Early Modern authors.

Abstract:

The Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) is a historical database corpus of monolingual glossaries, bilingual dictionaries (in which either source or target language is English), lexical encyclopedias, and linguistic treatises surviving in print or manuscript from the Tudor, Stuart, Caroline, Commonwealth, and Restoration periods. These texts document what speakers of English thought about their language over the lifetimes of authors like Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and John Dryden. LEME covers the period served by the Short-title and Wing catalogues from the advent of printing to the early eighteenth century. The scholar who pioneered the idea of the yet unrealized Early Modern English period dictionary, Charles Fries, would have recognized LEME to be a source of 'contemporary comments', quotations potentially useful in illustrating word usage. What Fries could not have imagined eighty years ago was a technology that would store all these quotations as distinct word-entries and list them, alphabetically by lemmatized headword, and then chronologically by lexicon date. A virtual Early Modern English period dictionary like LEME incorporates part of what he hoped to create. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a three-year grant that enabled me to begin LEME in 2000, and to the Canada Foundation for Innovation that is supplying the computing infrastructure required for its creation.

Abstract:

The Perseus Digital Library is an online resource that holds a variety of information on archaic and classical Greece, the early Roman empire, and early modern Europe with an immense amount of texts, images, catalogues, and relational databases. It also includes tools for humanities inquiry such as “linguistic analysis for heavily inflicted languages, linking and alignment with canonical citation schemes, and terminological, spatial, and visual databases for document contextualization.” This article describes the available tools on the platform, specific projects they have been involved with and their affiliations over the years. One of the central problems faced was supporting new publications, especially those that haven’t received proper peer review or those that don’t adhere to a standard media form, such as exploring digitally reconstructed historical spaces. The Perseus Digital Library is a member of the Stoa Publishing Consortium, which is developing models for online scholarly collaboration and an infrastructure for long-term interoperability and availability of its resources to a wide public. The team is eager to share their results in order to support the development of digital libraries in the entire field.

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of documentation for digital humanities resources. This includes technical documentation of textual markup or database construction, and procedural documentation about resource construction. A case study is presented of an attempt to reuse electronic text to create a digital library for humanities users, as part of the UCIS project. The results of qualitative research by the LAIRAH study on provision of procedural documentation are discussed, as also is, user perception of the purpose, construction and usability of resources collected using semi‐structured interviews and user workshops. In the absence of technical documentation, it was impossible to reuse text files with inconsistent markup (COCOA and XML) in a Digital Library. Also, although users require procedural documentation, about the status and completeness of sources, and selection methods, this is often difficult to locate. Creators of digital humanities resources should provide both technical and procedural documentation and make it easy to find, ideally from the project web site. To ensure that documentation is provided, research councils could make documentation a project deliverable. This will be even more vital once the AHDS is no longer funded to help ensure good practice in digital resource creation. Previous work has argued that documentation is important. However, the paper presents actual evidence of the problems caused by a lack of documentation and shows that this makes reuse of digital resources almost impossible. This is intended to persuade project creators who wish resources to be reused to provide documentation about its contents and technical specifications.