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

revisions to Criticism Bibliography

Following discussions at Camp, two changes have been made to the Bibliography of Criticism:

1. Luke Hollis checked every entry in the bibliography database to make sure the annotation field included the year of publication. Every entry should now include this information in the annotation field, which means it should subsequently show up in the results display. Following Luke's correcting of the database entries, I removed the display of the bracketed years at the ends of entries in the results display. The bracketed years were intended as a temporary fix to the problem, and with the years now displaying in every citation, they are no longer necessary. In the event that we want or need to reinstate the bracketed years in the future, I have saved the old php file, which formats the appearance of search results, here: /data/public/whitmanarchive/php/bibliography/bibliography_old_july07.php

2. I revised the bibliography index page, http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/bibliography/index.html, so that the lines in the paragraphs explaining the search do not wrap prematurely; the premature line wrapping had been preventing the "search" and "reset" buttons from being visible without scrolling, which was causing problems for some users of the Archive.

~Liz

Addition to Russian Translations section

Lisa Renfro's translation of the Elena Evitch article "Walt Whitman in Russian Translations: Whitman's 'Footprint' in Russian Poetry" is now available via the index page of the Russian translations. Evitch's essay accompanies Stephen Stepanchev's chapter on Whitman in Russia (which was already available on the site) to provide a broad introduction to Russian translations of Whitman.

The addition of the essay prompted a slight redesign and rewording of the index page to the Russian translations. I've revised the wording of the second paragraph, and I created a new category titled "Introduction and context," which links to the Stepanchev and Evitch pieces.

~Liz

revision to New York Aurora headnote

In consultation with Susan, I have revised the final sentence of the headnote for the New York Aurora (Poems in Periodicals) from "Whitman published two poems in the Aurora but left his position as editor by mid-May, following disagreements with the publishers over their efforts to shape his editorials" to "Whitman published two poems in the Aurora but left his position as editor by late April, following disagreements with the publishers over their efforts to shape his editorials." This change more accurately reflects the timeline of Whitman's association with the newspaper as set out in The Journalism and as reflected by the dates of his contributions to the paper.

~Liz

selected articles from WWQR now linked from Bibliography

Selected articles from WWQR are now available as PDFs, linked from the Bibliography of Criticism. At present, we are able to link to articles from the Summer 06, Winter/Spring 06-07, Summer 07, Fall 07, Winter 07, and Winter 2008 issues. If a user performs a search that returns an item from WWQR from this issue range, the citation will be followed by a link that reads "Full text available," as in the following example.

Walkiewicz, Kathryn. "Portraits and Politics: the Specter of Osceola in Leaves of Grass." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 25 (Winter 2008), 108-115. [Examines Whitman's "Osceola" and discovers the poem is a result of the poet's "piecing and pasting" his lines out of bits of George Catlin's description of Osceola and Catlin's recording of Dr. Frederick Weedon's account of Osceola's final days; argues that Osceola "remains merely symbolic for Whitman--a text to read and interpret."] [2008] Full text available.

Clicking "Full text available" will open a PDF of the article in the browser.

We will continue to add links to articles as we are able to create PDFs. We may also revise how the PDF opens (whether it should open in the browser or as a download).

~Liz

typo corrected in 1860 LG

An Archive-user spotted a typo in our transcription of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. I've revised the line "It avails not, neither time or place—instance avails not" (from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry") to read, correctly, "It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not," as indicated by the page image.

~Liz

Ed's introduction to the photographs (re)added

This essay, which had been available as far back as the brown site, went AWOL at some point in the various migrations that the gallery has made in the last couple of years. It is now available again (as a link from the Pictures and Sound index page).

~ Brett

Review of "Leaves of Grass Imprints" Added

I encoded a review of Leaves of Grass Imprints (1860-61) by Whitman that, as Ken noticed, was published in the special reviews issue of WWQR but that was not featured on our website. I also added a link to a previously encoded review of Poems by Walt Whitman (published in Temple Bar, Oct. 1869) that was missing on the index page for some inexplicable reason.

~ Vanessa

Pionery text revised

Lisa Renfro proofred the transciption of Pionery and found and fixed several small errors. I have posted the revised version of the file, and I've also revised the encoding and the stylesheet so that indented lines now display correctly.

~Liz

More updates to Periodicals

1. In the bibliography of poems published in periodicals, the entry "No Turning Back." Sunday Times 14 August 1842: [1] used to link to the wrong item. I've fixed the link.

2. I've revised the language in notes for "Our Future Lot" and "Time To Come," so that they provide more information about the ambiguous dating of what is believed to be the poem's first appearance in the Long-Islander. I've also revised the language in the headnotes for the Aurora and the Long-Islander as well as in the bibliography accordingly.

3. I've provided additional bibliographic information in editorial notes that reference the Comprehensive Reader's Edition of Leaves of Grass and volumes of correspondence. Rather than simply referring to the "Reader's Edition," for example, the notes now include full bibliographic information, where appropriate. See:
http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/periodical/poems/per.00125
http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/periodical/poems/per.00121
http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/periodical/poems/per.00117

Since we are able to--and do--link directly to volumes of With Walt Whitman in Camden from notes in the periodicals section, I have not provided full citations in those cases.

~Liz

Editorial policy statement revised

Following our discussion at last week's staff meeting, I have revised the language about image processing in our editorial policy statement.

The relevant section previously read: We first obtain a high-resolution digital image (TIFF scanned at 600 DPI or photographed at 3008 x 2000 pixels) and enter it into a tracking database. This high quality image is the basis for the transcription. To prepare it for web presentation, the image is converted to JPEG file format, cropped, and color-corrected. It is saved in three file sizes to accommodate various users' needs.

The new, revised language: We first obtain a high-resolution digital image (TIFF scanned at 600 DPI or photographed at 3008 x 2000 pixels) and enter it into a tracking database. This high quality image is the basis for the transcription. To prepare it for web presentation, the TIFF image is cropped and then used to derive three different JPEG images of different sizes to accommodate various users' needs.

~Liz

"Time to Come" added to the Periodicals section

I've added the page image, cropped view, and poem transcription for "Time to Come" to the Periodicals section of the Archive. I've updated the New York Aurora headnote so that it links to the new transcription. I've also added "Time to Come" to our bibliography of poems first published in periodicals. In all places, I've included the note, "This poem was published in the Aurora with the notation 'From the Democratic Review.' To date, however, we have not been able to verify that it was originally published there."

~Liz

Copy-text information added to Periodicals section

In consultation with Brett and Ken, I have made copy-text information available at the end of each poem in the Periodicals section of the Archive. In addition to revising the periodicals.xsl file, I have also revised the TEI header of the necessary poem transcriptions. The project note in the sourceDesc has been modified from, "Transcribed from our own digital image of the original" to "Our transcription is based on a digital image of the original." The language varies as necessary for scans from microfilm.

~Liz

Missing Images Added to the 1871 Passage to India Supplement

I have processed and uploaded images for pages 35 through 120 of the Passage to India annex in the 1871-72 edition of Leaves of Grass. Thanks to Matt Miller for alerting us that the images were still unavailable online.

~ Vanessa

Link to encoding guidelines now points to Whitman Archive wiki; private wiki established

Following successful installation and set-up of the private Whitman Archive wiki (http://whitmanarchive.org/staff/wiki/index.php/Main_Page username and password required) by Jason Bougger in CORS, I have moved private content from the public wiki (http://whitmanarchive.org/staff/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) to the private wiki. I have also revised the html of the About index page (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/about/index.html) to point to the encoding guidelines on public wiki. The major and most noticeable advantage of this change is that the encoding guidelines are no longer password protected, as they were when the wiki was hosted on segonku. Other information is or will be available to users of the Whitman Archive via the public wiki, including publicity and work history documents. The private wiki will eventually replace the Work in Progress page. More updates are forthcoming.

~Liz

Preferred Citations, EAD and contributors page

I have updated UC Berkeley's EAD file to reflect their newly requested citation:
Walt Whitman Collection, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
(I also edited the way the name appears on the Finding Aids contents/index page.)

I updated the collection name on the Contributor's page in the About section.

Stacey

revisions to New York Aurora headnote

I've made two small changes to the New York Aurora headnote, based on suggestions from Ken and Susan:

1. In the first sentence, the phrase "preoccupation on" has been changed to "preoccupation with."
2. The last sentence has been revised from "Whitman published two poems in the Aurora but left his position as editor by mid-May, following disagreements with the publishers over their efforts to control his editorials and articles" to "Whitman published two poems in the Aurora but left his position as editor by mid-May, following disagreements with the publishers over their efforts to shape his editorials."

~Liz

Preferred Citations—2 new; 1 revised

Per their request, I have altered Berkeley's preferred citation in the encoding guidelines. I have also added citation information for Knox College and Indiana University.

~ Brett

"The Death and Burial of McDonald Clarke" added to Poems in Periodicals

I've added the page image and transcription of "The Death and Burial of McDonald Clarke," first published in the New York Aurora on March 18, 1842, to Poems in Periodicals. I've revised the headnote, index page of the list of poems, and the bibliography accordingly. Janel Cayer and Vanessa Steinroetter proofread the transcription.

~Liz

Additions and revisions to Translations section

Kornei Chukovsky's Uot Uitmen: Poeziia Gradushchei Demokratii (1919) is now available on the Archive via Editions Printed Outside the U.S.: Russian Editions. Along with the Chukovsky edition, two more contextual/introductory pieces are now available, Stephen Stepanchev's chapter "Whitman in Russia" from Walt Whitman and the World, ed. Gay Wilson Allen and Ed Folsom (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), pp. 300-338, and Irwin Weil's "Memories of Chukovsky, as an Extraordinary Man and as a Poetic Translator," which has been written for the Archive.

I have revised the index page of the Russian Editions to reflect the addition of this new material. I also slightly modified the whitman.js file to omit the space between "U." and "S." that was appearing in the breadcrumbs trail, as well as the <title> on the Editions Printed Outside the U.S. index page for the same reason. In consultation with Ken, I've revised the statement of editorial policy to reflect that we are now making page images of translations available when possible.

Many people have contributed to the work on the Chukovsky edition and the contextual materials, including Nina Shevchuk Murray, Lisa Renfro, Vanessa Steinroetter, and Sarah Synovec.

~Liz

TokenX on the Whitman Archive

TokenX is now available on the Whitman Archive. Created by Brian Pytlik Zillig, TokenX is a powerful text analysis, visualization, and play tool that has been customized for use on the Archive.

The Archive homepage and the Resources index page have changed slightly as a result of the addition of TokenX. "Tools" is now included as a subheading under "Resources" on the home page. Also, in the past, clicking on "Resources" on the homepage took the user directly to the teaching materials. The Resources page now offers links to teaching, tools, or the Archive search.

--Liz

Drum-Taps' Revisions II

Heidi Bean from the University of Iowa discovered the encoding and transcription errors in the below post.

~Joshua

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Drum-Taps' Revisions

The following encoding and transcription alterations were made to the "Drum-Taps" section of the 1867 version of Leaves of Grass:

2. Poem "Drum Taps," p. 71a, linegroup 7, line 1: "preceeding" should read "preceding."

3. Poem "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame," p. 16a, line 4: ends with a semicolon, not a colon.

4. Poem "From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird," p. 18a: Title has a linebreak after "fly."

5. Poem "From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird," code error: "Michgan" should be "Michigan" in the following line of code:
<seg>To Kanada, 'till I absorb Kanada in myself&#8212;to <orig reg="Michgan">Michi-</orig></
seg>

6. Poem "The Centenarian's Story," p. 19a: Title should have a line break after "The"

7. Poem "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" p. 25a: Title should have a line break after the first "Pioneers!"

8. Poem "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" p. 25a and onward: The first line of each linegroup should be indented.

9. Poem "Rise O Days from your Fathomless Deeps," p. 35a Title should have a linebreak after "Fathom-"

10. Poem "Come up from the fields father," p. 36a: Title should have a linebreak after "fields"

11. Poem "Years of the Unperform'd," p.53a, line 1, seg 2: "august" should not be capitalized.

12. Poem "Year that Trembled and Reel'd beneath me," p. 54a, line 4: Line should end in a semicolon rather than a colon.


13. Poem "Hymn of Dead Soldiers," p. 59a, linegroup 9, line 1: "O love" – the "O" should be capitalized.

14. Poem "Hymn of Dead Soldiers," p. 59a, linegroup 5, line 1 "closer yet;" – The line should end with a semicolon rather than a colon.  In the online page image, it looks like a colon (but it's a bit fuzzy), but I've confirmed with our 1867 edition that it's a semicolon (at least in our copy).

15. Poem "Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd," p. 67a.  The title should have a linebreak after second "the."

1. Poem "Song of the Banner at Day-Break," p.16a, line 4, segment 2: "house" should be "houses"

2. Poem "Bivouac on a Mountain Side," p.70a, line 4, segment 2: there should be a comma, rather than a semicolon, after "shapes"

3. Poem "When Lilacs in the Door-Yard Bloom'd" p.11b, section 18, linegroup 38, line 4, segment 1: "you" should be "yon"

4. Poem "O Captain! My Captain!" p.13b, all linegroups: the last four lines of each stanza should be progressively indented.  (Looking at the image will explain what I mean.)  I wasn't sure how to encode this, so the same error exists on the code for the 1865 Drum Taps with Sequel.

5. Poem "Spirit Whose Work Is Done" p.14b, line 16, segment 1: "Leave me pulses of rage!" should be "Leave me your pulses of rage!"

6. Poem "As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap, Camerado" p.19b, Title: There should be a linebreak before "Camerado."

7. Poem "In Clouds Descending, In Midnight Sleep," p.20a: The last line of each stanza—"I dream, I dream, I dream."—is not a line segment, as it appears here, but rather a new line with unique indentation.  The indentation of these lines is slightly shorter than the indentation of the second segment of a long line.

8. Poem "Dirge for Two Veterans," p.21a: The first and last lines of each linegroup should be indented.  Again, I wasn't sure how to encode this, so the same error exists on the code for the 1865 Drum Taps with Sequel.

~Joshua

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One Contemporary Review Added

I have encoded a short review of the 1855 Leaves of Grass from The Albion and posted it online: http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/leaves1855/anc.00272.html

Vanessa

updates to periodicals section

I corrected a typo to per.00004, "Song for Certain Congressman." Archive user André Hurtgen pointed out that the line "And pacify slace-breeding wrath" should read "And pacify slave-breeding wrath." Also, based on a suggestion from Susan Belsaco, I updated the bibliography of per.00185, the headnote for the Magazine of Art. I replaced "forthcoming" with the updated bibliographic information for the article "Editing Whitman's Poems in Periodicals."

~Liz

Minor correction in markup of 1856 Leaves

Ryan Feather, one of the computer science students who is working on a comparison of the XML files of the editions of Leaves, pointed out an error in which a closing tag occurred before a page break where only a closing tag should have (at the bottom of page 133). I corrected and uploaded.

~ Brett

Challenge grant info. updated on front page and support page

I've replaced the first item under "News and Updates" to show that the fundraising goals has been met, and I've revised support/index.html to the same end.

~ Brett

Revised ancillary xslt

I revised ancillary.xsl to blockquote quoted material. The change affects xml material featured in the About section of the Archive including "Articles and Interviews About the Archive."

~Liz

Encoding errors in 1871 Leaves corrected

A helpful Archive visitor, Samuel Graber, pointed out that the electronic table of contents for this edition didn't have an entry for either "Lo! Victress on the Peaks!" or "World, Take Good Notice." In the transcription file (ppp.00270.xml) both had been mistakenly encoded as sections of the previous poem, "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors." I corrected the structure, added appropriate tagging, validated, and uploaded.

~ Brett

Copyright on splash page updated

I changed the copyright notice at the bottom of the splash page (from 1995-2008 to 1995-2009).

~ Brett