editorial policy statement revised

I have revised a paragraph of the editorial policy statement relating to correspondence. The paragraph which previously read, "Those letters for which the Archive has digital images have been freshly transcribed and edited, often for the first time. For now, we follow the practices of other editors of correspondence by remaining as unobtrusive as possible and presenting an inclusive text representing as nearly as possible a clean, reading version of the letter. We have not recorded deletions, noted authors' insertions, or attempted to duplicate the appearance of the original holographs. We have omitted letterheads and standardized the placement of salutations, signatures, and postscripts. These decisions have been made on a pragmatic basis and to create consistency among the materials presented. As we secure more digital images of original letters, and as we have time, we will update our XML files and encode all deletions and insertions. In the future, Archive users will have an opportunity to choose between two different ways of viewing the correspondence, either as clean, reading versions or as diplomatic transcriptions," now includes a sentence explaining our treatment of meta-commentary, "Those letters for which the Archive has digital images have been freshly transcribed and edited, often for the first time. For now, we follow the practices of other editors of correspondence by remaining as unobtrusive as possible and presenting an inclusive text representing as nearly as possible a clean, reading version of the letter. We have not recorded deletions, noted authors' insertions, nor attempted to duplicate the appearance of the original holographs. We have also omitted metacommentary in the form of cues such as "(over)" that were relevant to the reader of the original letter as a physical object but are more distracting than helpful in an electronic environment. We have omitted letterheads and standardized the placement of salutations, signatures, and postscripts. These decisions have been made on a pragmatic basis and to create consistency among the materials presented. As we secure more digital images of original letters, and as we have time, we will update our XML files and encode all deletions and insertions. In the future, Archive users will have an opportunity to choose between two different ways of viewing the correspondence, either as clean, reading versions or as diplomatic transcriptions."

~Liz

Editorial Policy Statement Revised

I have fixed two errors in the Editorial Policy Statement: I have changed "restraints" in the first paragraph to "constraints" and have replaced an en-dash in the Translations section with an em-dash.

Also, I have folded the longer correspondence editorial policy statement into the correspondence section so that the information now exists in a single location.

~Liz

Spanish version of "Spanish Editions" Intro Page Posted

The Spanish Editions intro/index page, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/foreign/spanish/index.html, now allows users to click through to a Spanish version of the page (a feature we recently adopted for the German editions). Matt Cohen translated the index page and provided the xhtml file.

~Liz

broken link fixed

The link to Ed Folsom's "Reply" (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/about/articles/anc.00143.html) from within "Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives" (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/about/articles/anc.00142.html) was pointing to the wrong file. I've fixed the link.

~Liz

German Translation Added

Liz and I finished preparing the German translation by Hans Reisiger for online publication, and it has now been added to the Whitman Archive website (http://whitmanarchive.org/published/foreign/german/index.html). We decided to include a German translation of the introductory note, which you can access by clicking on the link in the upper right-hand corner.

~Vanessa

error in transcription of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" fixed

An Archive user pointed out an error in our transcription of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" I deleted the comma following "heavier" after consultation with Susan and after reviewing the page image.

~Liz

link to Integrated Guide added to poetry manuscripts index page

Following discussion at Camp and in consultation with Ken, I've added a link to the Integrated Guide from the Poetry Manuscripts index page, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/index.html

The purpose of the addition is to cue users to the fact that even if we have not transcribed a poetry manuscript, images of the manuscript are most likely available via the Integrated Guide.

~Liz