starting Walt's outgoing correspondence

Liz,

We can pursue these matters after the ALA meeting.  Nonetheless I wanted you to know that I talked to Ted today about the NHPRC grant and its implications.  The main thing we need to do, of course, is to get rolling on the war-time correspondence written by Walt.  As you know, we want to be able to meet project objectives so that we stand a good chance of getting a renewal.

We can talk about procedure and policy more, but the working idea is to start with a simple transcription of what is in Ed Miller's volumes of correspondence from the war years.  WW's words are in the public domain and we can use them.  Vanessa could be put on this (that seems esp. fitting since she wants to do a dissertation on Civil War era lit).  And we could put Alyssa on to some part of the task too---also on transcription or checking, etc.  Let's talk in person about the options we have for generating the text.

best, Ken

Response to: Finding aid added: Musee de la Cooperation Franco-Americaine

Liz, Brett,

I tried to post  through the web form but I was blocked because it didn't like my password.  I was sure I had the right password, so I'll have to get some help on that next week.  Anyway, thanks for creating this repository finding guide and linking the mss to it.

I have several things to note.  On the name of the museum, mentioned a half dozen times--once on the index and then multiple times on the entry itself--we have several accent marks missing.  Can someone please add those.  I'll place the proper accented spelling here, though I'm a little worried they may disappear as this message travels through email:

Musée national de la coopération franco-américaine

We want an accent aigu on the first    
e in musée, coopération, and américaine

Also a picky thing:  there is more white space showing after "Biographical information" than there is following "Abstract" and "Scope and content."

Finally, I gather that we have rectos only of this ms rather than versos.  Did we somehow forget to request versos, or did they fail to provide them? Bah.  I guess I'll have to get back into correspondence with these people.

Thanks again.  Ken

Finding aid added: Musee de la Cooperation Franco-Americaine

Liz created this from the (minimal) information we've gotten in correspondence and from info. on their website. Images are available.

— Brett

Front page and Support page altered in light of new NHPRC grant

As per Ken's request, I've added a credit to NHPRC as a funder on the site's opening page and on the Support page. On the support page, I've also made the slight revisions to the text that Ken asked for. Because the NHPRC logo's text was unreadable at the size of the other logos (80px wide) and because IMLS has a new text-based logo that is even more illegible at that size, I've updated all of the logos to 130px wide.

— Brett

fixing a date and recording source on a Russian Translation of Whitman

Nina posted news of our new Russian editions going live, and by doing so someone caught an error. We had dated Pionery as 1912; I have now changed it on the site to 1918.

Kelly Miller, in an email to Nina, asks what the source text of Pionery is. In effect, she wants to know where we are getting the page images with the striking illustrations. As Nina notes, it is from my personal copy. This info is, I think, in the TEI header, but it doesn't display by the text anywhere right? And the same is true for the American editions of Leaves. The 1855 we have on the site is the Iowa copy, but unless someone goes into the header that infomation isn't readily available. Would you agree that we should start making more visible a note indicating the source text for the etext and page images? Also, I might point out that our notes on the poetry manuscripts all come at the bottom of the documents. This hasn't been a problem so far because we have mostly been dealing short poetry manuscripts. But when we deal with a Leaves of Grass text, especially the later editions, if the note on the text appears at the end it may never be noticed. It would seem like this information perhaps out to appear on the public site as a headnote rather than a footnote. Again let me know your thoughts, and of course set me right if I've blanked out on something obvious.

Ken

----- Forwarded by Kenneth M Price/English/UNL/UNEBR on 05/16/2008 09:34 AM -----
Nina Shevchuk <n_shevchuk@yahoo.com>
05/16/2008 09:20 AM
To Kelly Elizabeth Miller <kem4h@virginia.edu> cc Kenneth Price <kprice2@unl.edu>
Subject Re: Fwd: [SEELANGS] Russian Translations of Whitman now on the web at Walt Whitman Archive

Dear Kelly --
it's great to hear from you! Thank you so much for getting in touch with us. I would love to get a copy of the catalogue of your exhibit -- I know Dr. Price at the archive, whom I'm copying on this message, would like to see it, too. You can send it to Nina Murray, 1833 Van Dorn, Lincoln, NE 68502.
You are also absolutely right about the date -- I don't know how we ended up with 1912 on the website, it should be 1918. My research indicates the same. I am not on my regular computer right now, but I will send you a link to a great article about one of the artists who worked with Segodnia -- I assume you read Russian?
The images of the book have a bit of a back story. MOMA in New York owns a hand-colored copy, but they were hesitant to release it for imaging, so Dr. Price purchased a copy and that is the book that we imaged. I'll leave it to Dr. Price to volunteer the information about the source. I have also seen this particular book on various antique books auctions in Germany, England, and Russia itself, but I have not seen other Segodnia books. They are certainly great pieces of art! If you are interested, I could send you a copy of my essay on Whitman's reception in Russia that includes a section on Segodnia.

Best,

Nina

----- Original Message ----
From: Kelly Elizabeth Miller <kem4h@virginia.edu>
To: n_shevchuk@yahoo.com
Cc: wraabe@unlnotes.unl.edu
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 9:02:38 AM
Subject: Fwd: [SEELANGS] Russian Translations of Whitman now on the web at Walt Whitman Archive

Dear Nina,

I read your recent message posted to SEELANGS, and I was very glad to
see that you have obtained digital images of the Russian edition of
Whitman's "Pionery." I had talked with Wesley Raabe a bit about the
fact that we included the book in our recent UVa Library exhibition of
Russian children's books on loan from the private collection of Sasha
Lurye. I could send you a copy of the catalog if you're interested.
"Pionery" was one of the titles included in the exhibition and
catalog. Our research, however, shows that this book was printed no
earlier than 1918. The artel "Segodnia" was formed in that year and
was responsible for the publication of a series of books. Could you
let me know how you arrived at the date of 1912? I would also like to
know how to discover on the archive what the source of the images was.
Who owns the copy of the book that you imaged?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts! This is fascinating stuff.

Kelly

p.s. I'm copying Wesley on this message.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nina Shevchuk <n_shevchuk@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, May 5, 2008 at 10:19 AM
Subject: [SEELANGS] Russian Translations of Whitman now on the web at
Walt Whitman Archive
To: SEELANGS@bama.ua.edu


Dear SEELANGers:

The Walt Whitman Archive is presenting a growing number of
translations of Leaves of Grass and other works of Walt Whitman. We
recently made available two early Russian translations of Whitman,
Konstantin Bal?mont's Pobiegi Travy (1911), and a translation of
Whitman's "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" (1912). Bal?mont's work was
initially contributed to the literary journal Vesy; he later published
Pobiegi Travy as the first book-length translation of Whitman's poems
into Russian. The rare chapbook edition of "Pioneers! O
Pioneers!"—translated by an individual known only by the initials "S.
M."—illustrates the avant-garde mixed-media experimentation that was a
hallmark of post-revolutionary Russian culture. An introduction to
these and other Russian translations is forthcoming. For now, the
Archive makes available Martin Bidney's article "Leviathan,
Yggdrasil, Earth Titan, Eagle: Bal?mont's Reimagining of Walt Whitman"
(reproduced with permission).

The Archive's web format provides easy search through the text as well
as ready connection to the original text. We hope you will explore
this new resource and spread the word to anyone who might be
interested. Other translations are forthcoming.


best wishes,
Nina Shevchuk-Murray and
Walt Whitman Archive staff



--
Kelly Miller
Assistant to the Deputy University Librarian
Lecturer, Slavic and Art History
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400114
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4114
Phone: 434.243.2184
E-mail: kellymiller@virginia.edu

adjustments to the support

Brett:

Let's revise the NEH blurb on the support page to say:

Our ongoing effort to collect, transcribe, and encode Whitman's poetry manuscripts was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities divisions of Collaborative Research (2000-2003) and Preservation and Access (2003-2005). A "We the People" Challenge Grant (2005-2009) enables us to retain key staff as work on all aspects of the site progresses.  Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Let's revise the IMLS blurb on the support page to say:

Our project to create an integrated finding guide to Whitman's manuscripts received start-up funds from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation (2001) and was supported through a major grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (2002-2004). A second grant from IMLS supported a project entitled "Interoperability of Metadata Standards for Digital Thematic Research Collections: A Model Based on the Walt Whitman Archive" (2005-2007).

Let's create new language for a NHPRC blurb on the support page to say:

We have recently received a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (2008-2009) to edit Walt Whitman's Civil War Writings.


Please let me know if you see problems with any of this.

Ken

duk.00003 record in tracking database and EAD updated

I've deleted the old db record for duk.00003 and replaced it with a new one with links to the new images (and to the old TEI file for the time being). To reflect our decision to treat what was duk.00003 as 3 separate items, I've created two new records: duk.00006 and duk.00008.

I've also radically altered what was the record for duk.00003 in the Duke EAD. I've corrected/expanded the title and scope and content note(s) and created <c04>s for duk.00006 and duk.00008.

— Brett

Duke EAD and updated

I've corrected the <extptr>s in the Duke EAD to make the image links work.

— Brett

Re: "Debris" changes and index page for 1860

The process by which the TOC of individual poems and clusters is generated is part manual, part automated: I or someone else needs to run an XSTL stylesheet over the TEI file and then repost the resulting XML file. If no one else gets to it soon, I'll try to.

— Brett

Finding Aids / Library of Congress-Feinberg

Added new images from March re-shoot to the figures folder and updated links to new versos.

Stacey

"Debris" changes and index page for 1860

Brett,

Thanks for making the changes to "Debris." They look good. The one thing that I think still needs to be tweaked is the index page for the "etext of individual poems and clusters" view of the 1860 Leaves. The individual titles of the "Debris" aren't displaying, though the individual titles of the other clusters in the book are. Does that index page need to be manually edited? I would have thought that changing encoding would have made the titles appear.

best,
Ken




Ken,

I've just finished making changes related to Debris in the 1860 and 1867 editions. I've put a fairly extensive though not absolutely detailed note up on the new changelog blog. Besides what's there, here are a couple of things for you to consider:

- In naming the new Works, I've followed what seemed to be the model of similar things already present in the WorkIDs file. Namely, I've generally used first lines up to but not including the first comma, semicolon, or em-dash; I have not added capitalization; I have not used brackets. Three poems are worth particular attention in this regard:
"One sweeps by, attended by an immense train"
"One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair"
[I used the whole first lines in these cases, to disambiguate]
"Behold"
[I used just this, even though a one-word title based on the first line seemed iffy. It is unambiguous among the Works, though, and given all of the commas in the line I'm not sure what the alternative would be.]

- The 1860 poems "Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me" and "I understand your anguish" were both eventually folded into "Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours" (as stanzas 2 and 3, respectively). I have not created a new Work ID for either of these, believing that to be consistent with decisions we made before. I'm not completely confident about my recollection on this point, though, so if you think otherwise let me know.

Thanks,
Brett

More updates to periodicals

I've made additional small changes to the periodicals portion of the site, fixing italics and a couple of proofreading errors (of the transposed and extra letter variety).

Revised Editions Printed Outside U.S. Index Page

Small revision to http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/foreign/index.html: Last sentence of the introductory paragraph now reads, "Readers interested in the theoretical issues related to literary translations, digital archives, and Whitman may wish to consult  Matt Cohen's essay, 'Transgenic Deformation: Literary Translation and the Digital Archive.'"

Previously read, "Users may also be interested in reading Matt Cohen's essay, 'Transgenic Deformation: Literary Translation and the Digital Archive,' which discusses some of the theoretical issues related to literary translations, digital archives, and Whitman."

Essay Added

Added Matt Cohen's essay, "Transgenic Deformation: Literary Translation and the Digital Archive," to the Articles and Interviews About the Archive section of the site. We also now link to this essay from the index page of Editions Printed Outside the U.S.

~Liz

"Beat! Beat! Drums!" Periodical Printing Updated

Whitman's Poems in Periodicals now features the Harper's Weekly printing of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" as the poem's first publication. I have taken down the Boston Daily Evening Transcript printing, revised the Harper's Weekly headnote, and revised the transcription of the poem according to the Harper's Weekly printing. A page image of the poem is forthcoming. The publication information following the transcription now includes the following note, in explanation of the change:

Publication Information
"Beat! Beat! Drums!."  Harper's Weekly  5 (28 September 1861):  623.  Although dated 28 September 1861, the issue of Harper's Weekly featuring Whitman's "Beat! Beat! Drums!" actually appeared one week earlier, on 21 September 1861. (See Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, ed., Leaves of Grass: A Norton Critical Edition [New York: W. W. Norton, 1973] and Ted Genoways, Walt Whitman and the Civil War: America's Poet During the Lost Years of 1860–1862 [Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming].) The poem appeared on the same day in the weekly newspaper the New York Leader, also dated 28 September 1861. The poem was reprinted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 23 September 1861 and the Boston Daily Evening Transcript on 24 September 1861. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle printing includes the attribution, "From Harper's Weekly." In the following weeks, the poem appeared in numerous other newspapers throughout the United States. Whitman included the poem, with slight revision, in Drum-Taps (1865).

~Liz