Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Links to reviews sub-indexes fixed

Links to the reviews sub-indexes by volume (in http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/index.html) were returning 404 errors. I compared the criticism sitemap on the server with my local copy and discovered that the section for handling the sub-indexes had been trimmed pretty drastically. I copied that section from my local sitemap file into the one from the server and re-uploaded. The links now work. The differences between the two sitemap files were much more extensive, but I decided not to simply restore the older file without knowing who made the changes and why.

~ Brett

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Links in With Walt Whitman in Camden corrected

Liz pointed out that links to the WWWiC texts were making calls to the test server (libr). I made three changes to the traubel xslt stylesheets, substituting relative paths to local files on kosmos for the absolute references to files on libr. Specifically, the changed references are to the "figures" directory and the linkstyle.css stylesheet.

~ Brett

Friday, December 12, 2008

WWA People Page Update


On December 12, I made the following changes to the WWA People page:
 
Photos and bios were added for
Erica Fretwell
Beverley Rilett
Joshua Ware
 
(Janel Cayer will be added, as will Ted Genoways and Blake Bronson-Bartlett.)
 
These staff members were moved to the contributors section:
 
Zach Bajaber (web design and programming) 2004-2008
Wesley Raabe (developed a prototype web site and information architecture for the Civil War Washington project) 2007-2008
 
Changes were made to several bios and photos of existing WWA staff  who provided updates.
 
-Bev Rilett
 
 


Monday, December 8, 2008

"Beat! Beat! Drums!" image added 12/1

On December 1, I uploaded the full-page and cropped images of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" to the periodicals part of the site. Thanks to Sarah for scanning the pages of Harper's Weekly and Janel for merging the scans.

Images from the New York Aurora will be coming soon (following server switch).

~Liz

Saturday, November 22, 2008

changes to Traubel biography

The Horace Trabuel biograpy at
http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/disciples/tei/anc.00249.html
had a surprising number of typos in it. I have fixed the following:


1)In the last sentence of the first paragraph, I changed the word "our"
to "out."

2)In the fifth paragraph, a sentence said "Traubel was indefatigable in his support of Whitman's word." Changed to read: "Whitman's work."

3)In the second paragraph, Traubel is referred to as one of Whitman's "literary executers." Changed to "literary executors." (Traubel's work wasn't that deadly!)

4) In the last paragraph, the word Bon appeared as BOn in the first sentence. Fixed.

Ken

Monday, November 10, 2008

DTD made available and linked from About section

I uploaded a zip file containing the newly tweaked DTD, chars.ent, and notas.ent. And I added a link to the zip file at the bottom of the index page in the "About" section.

~ Brett

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Once a Week headnote revised

Susan and I have revised the Once a Week headnote, per.00184 of Whitman's Poems in Periodicals, to correct some information. I posted the revised version of the headnote on Monday, November 3, 2008.

~Liz

Monday, November 3, 2008

contemporary review added

I have added a review of the 1860-1861 edition of Leaves of Grass, T.V.'s "Walt Whitman," which appeared in the Liberator on 7 September 1860. The review is linked via the index page of reviews for the 1860-61 edition; its direct url is http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/leaves1860/anc.00266.html

Thanks to Sabrina and Sarah for their work on the transcription and encoding of this review.

~Liz

Friday, October 31, 2008

Periodicals section updated

I have added my essay, "Editing Whitman's Poems in Periodicals," to the Periodicals section of the site. I've also slightly revised the index page for "Whitman's Poems in Periodicals," including revisions to titles of the two introductory essays and the addition of author names. In addition, I have moved the link that used to appear on the index page that linked to poems misattributed to Whitman. This link now appears at the beginning of the Bibliography of Whitman's Poems first Published in Periodicals, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/periodical/bibliography/index.html.

Both Susan's essay, "Introduction to Whitman's Poems in Periodicals," and mine are also now linked from Articles and Interviews about the Archive, per Ken's instruction.

I'll be continuing to update (adding new material and fixing oddities) the Periodicals section over the next couple of weeks.

~Liz


Corrections to reviews xml and html files

I believe I have addressed the problem with italics in the review tei files. A majority of untitled reviews for which we derived an Archive title, such as [Review of Leaves of Grass (1881-1882)], did not include <hi rend="italic"> around book titles (this was not just an LG issue, as was previously thought) in either <titleStmt><title> or <head>. In the display of the reviews, the content of <head> appears at the beginning of the document, and the publication information following the review pulls information from the content of <title> in <titleStmt>. I have revised the tei files, and italics should now be displaying in both places. Something to think about: <hi rend="italic"> is allowed in <title>, but for some reason it seems a little strange to me, and without more investigation I'm not sure how common its use is in <title> across other Archive files. This may be an issue to revisit as we develop plans for migrating to p5, since it could be one of those places where we can achieve an even finer level of consistency.

I fixed a broken link in the publication information of anc.00189, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/leaves1860/anc.00189.html

I also updated <title> on several html pages because the titles, which appear in Google/other search engine results and at the top of the browser, were incorrect.

~Liz

Monday, October 27, 2008

"Electronic Scholarly Editions" added to the Archive

I have added Ken's essay, "Electronic Scholarly Editions," first published in the Blackwell Companion to Digital Literary Studies, to the Articles and Interviews section of the Archive. Thanks to Sarah for encoding.

~Liz

Friday, October 24, 2008

Corrected Minor Error in the Image Descriptions

As some of you may have noticed, there was a minor error in the way the descriptions accompanying the Whitman photos displayed on the Archive website. What should have been an mdash appeared as "รข€." The error should now be fixed.

Thanks,
Vanessa

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

FAQ moved

After a conversation with Ken, I've moved the "Frequently Asked Questions" link so that it is now under "Project and Staff Information," rather than "Methodology and Standards" on the About page.

~Liz

Monday, October 13, 2008

Handwriting Tool

I've updated and reformatted the handwriting tool "unScripting Whitman" to fit in with the look and feel of the site. The URL and access to the tool from the encoding guidelines remain the same (although the name will be changed in the wiki table of contents to Whitman Handwriting Tool).

--Stacey

Sunday, October 12, 2008

1855 review tweaked

The Sept 15, 1855 review, "Leaves of Grass"—An Extraordinary Book," included this sentence:

"It is one of the strangest compounds of transcendentalism, bombast, philosophy, folly, wisdom, wit and dullness which it ever catered into the heart of man to conceive."

I assumed "catered" was a typo for "entered" and then verified that "entered" appears in the copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle online.

Ken

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Article added to the "Articles and Interview" section

I have added William Pannapacker's article "The Walt Whitman Archive: The Body of Work Electric" to the "Articles and Interviews" section of the Archive website. The online version still needs to be compared to the print version in detail, since I based the encoding off of a Word file.

-Vanessa

Friday, October 3, 2008

Live reviews updated

I have uploaded revised versions of the reviews files to the live site. These revised files include all of the work that Sabrina and Ken have done adding footnotes to the new reviews, as well as updated TEI headers. In some cases I have also taken care of some small validation errors that were apparently holdovers from an earlier stage in the process.

I've also fixed the the title problem in anc.00020, available http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/tei/anc.00020.html, after checking it against our photocopy of the review.

Prior to uploading the new versions of the files, I did back up the older versions, so we can reinstate anything if necessary.

~Liz

Thursday, October 2, 2008

More tweaking of guidelines

I've converted more of the wiki markup so that the page now displays an auto-generated table of contents.

~Brett

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

updating the guidelines

I have started the process of updating the guidelines.

I changed: last updated to "October 2008." I added as funders: American Council of Learned Societies, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, and The National Historical Publications and Records Commission. I changed the distributor from IATH at Virginia to CDRH at Nebraska.

The copyright date was changed from 2005 to 2008.

I deleted IATH as a sponsor. Daniel Pitti continues to serve as a consultant, but I don't think we can say that IATH is any longer a sponsor.

Ken

Encoding Guidelines moved

I've finished a first round of editing the PmWiki version of the guidelines and have made this version the destination of the link on the Archive. Unlike the MediaWiki version that's been the destination for the last couple of months, this PmWiki version is not password-protected. I've also added Middlebury College to the table of Preferred Citations.

~Brett

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Correction of typo in 1860 LG

One of Ed's students pointed out that our transcription of the opening line of Calamus #42 had omitted both of the "accented e's":

"to help him become lve of mine,"

should read

"to help him become élève of mine,"

I have inserted the proper unicodes for these in the XML and uploaded.

~Brett

Monday, September 29, 2008

correction of typo in Helms's essay in the criticism section

I corrected the spelling of judgment in this sentence:

"He thus enacts the centuries-old response to such cultural judgemen—he stifles his cries, harbors his feelings "silent and endless" (he hides them and protects them, hides them to protect them), and he ends the poem "taciturn and deprest" in a mood reminiscent of a Poe nightmare."

Ken

Display of figures fixed in current/selected criticism and articles about the Archive

After noticing that some figures weren't displaying in a couple of the current criticism texts as well as in articles about the Archive, I investigated the problem and believe everything is now fixed. The problem seemed to be a holdover from the switch to the Nebraska server, the redesign, and possibly some previous restructuring of directories. I also used this opportunity to clear up some duplication of images in various directories. All images for articles about the Archive should now be located in about/figures and all images for current or selected criticism should be located in criticism/current/figures.

~Liz

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Rossetti and Rhys pages tweaked

I've gotten rid of all of the anchor tags in these XHTML files, since they were creating a weird effect: mouseover of *any* text caused underlining to appear, as for a link (though clicking didn't produce any results). That's gone. I've saved backups of the old files, in case they will be of use; I know work is going on to convert these to XML anyway, so the XHTML versions may be replaced altogether soon.

~Brett

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Title Added to Zoomable Image Pages

After I fixed the links to the zoomable MS images, Ken pointed out that the title in the grey bar above each one read "Untitled." I've changed that to read "Zoomable Page Image."

~ Brett

Friday, September 5, 2008

Links to LC images in tracking database

I've done a search-and-replace that fixed links to the Library of Congress manuscripts' page images.

~ Brett

Zoomify enabled for live poetry manuscripts

I've just finished transferring all of the files that allow the "zoomed" view of manuscripts (for those available in high-resolution).

~ Brett

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Finding Aids

Thanks to the research and revision efforts of Vanessa, I've been able to parse and style hugely revised versions of the Texas HRC, NYPL-Berg and NYPL-Lion Finding Aids. (The Lion EAD file has not been public until now.)

Changes have also been made (minor revisions to scope content statements, style issues, and/or adding live links to images) to:

Amherst College,
University of California-Berkeley,
Boston University,
University of Virginia,
Walt Whitman House in Camden,
and Yale.

** Please remember that some of the links to images (most often versos) might not work at the moment, but these items have been placed on the General Reshoot list and will be updated when the images are available.

Stacey

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Changelog link added to About page

As discussed at Camp, I've added a link to the Changelog on the About page, under Project and Staff Information.

~Liz

Friday, July 25, 2008

LC reshoot list updated - Notebook #101

I've added a fourth sheet to the spreadsheet, on which I've listed each page of this notebook, its name at the LC notebooks website, our best image, other images of the same page, and whether it needs to be reshot. Since a majority of the pages do need to be reshot, it may be best to reshoot the whole thing once carefully (so as to be able to give images with like metadata).

~ Brett

Archive IDs Added to Display of Correspondence

I've updated the correspondence xslt to display the Archive IDs.

~Liz


Friday, July 18, 2008

Updated template and validator linked from WIP page

After consulting with Ken about how best to update the TEI header in the template, I've revised it and uploaded it to the private area of the site. I've also uploaded a new version of the clip library for NoteTab; it includes the revised template, validator, and common TEI element clips.

~ Brett

With WW in Camden, vol. 3 credits added

Matt Cohen sent me the text for the "credits" link and I put it up.

~ Brett

Links to past versions of the Archive

To the "About the Archive" page, under "Project and Staff Information," I've added a link to a page that offers the complete contents of two earlier states of the WWA: the "brown" site and the "blue bulge" site—both in their last incarnations.

At camp a few years ago, we decided to make the brown version available but to password protect it so that search engines wouldn't index it (and send users to outdated content). This time around, Zach suggested that we should not password protect the archived versions but instead add to the "robots.txt" file instructions for the spiders not to crawl them. So that's what we've done.

~ Brett

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Finding Aids / Johns Hopkins

Processed images requested (April 2008) and received from Johns Hopkins University in the database, warehouse, and figures folders (jhu.00001).

Updated EAD file with live links.

Stacey

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Cropped views of periodical printings new available

The cropped views of poems published in periodicals are now available. (If Whitman's poem is the only item on a page, then there is no cropped view provided.) In addition, the links to both page images and cropped views now use thumbnail image files. In the past, these links were small versions of the full-size images dynamically created in the browser. The smaller file size of the thumbnails should make these pages load faster.

--Liz

Friday, June 13, 2008

Reviews Updated

I have made the necessary revisions to the review of the 1881-82 LG in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin and to the review of the 1886 printing of Poems by Walt Whitman in the Leeds Mercury. The revised versions are both now live on the site.

Thanks!


Sabrina

Monday, June 9, 2008

Two reviews added

Vanessa passed the XML transcriptions of two reviews on to me about a month ago, and I've just now validated, uploaded, and created links from the appropriate index pages to them. The first is a review of the 1881-82 LG and appeared in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. The second is a review of the 1886 printing of Poems by Walt Whitman and appeared in the Leeds Mercury.

~ Brett

Date correction made to periodicals section

I've changed the publication date of "A Kiss to the Bride" from 21 May 1873 to 21 May 1874 in the poem transcription file, the headnote for the New York Daily Graphic, and in the bibliography of Whitman's poems first published in periodicals.

~Liz

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Fw: [wwa-changelog] Response 2 to: Finding aid added: Musee de la Cooperation Franc...


That was haste.  The capitalization is fine.  Ken


----- Forwarded by Kenneth M Price/English/UNL/UNEBR on 06/03/2008 08:57 AM -----
whitmanarchive <whitmanarchive@gmail.com>

06/02/2008 01:53 PM

To
kprice@unlnotes.unl.edu
cc
Subject
[wwa-changelog] Response to: Finding aid added: Musee de la Cooperation Franc...





I've added the "accented e" characters to both the index page and the EAD file. I noticed that in his message Ken only capitalized the first word of the museum's name. I wasn't sure whether that was email haste or a cue that the capitalization also needed to be changed. For now, I've left capitalization as it was.

~ Brett

--
Posted By whitmanarchive to
wwa-changelog at 6/02/2008 01:48:00 PM

Monday, June 2, 2008

Fw: [wwa-changelog] Response 2 to: fixing a date and recording source on a Russian ...


All,

Ok, agreed.  We should make explicit the source of our texts.  Liz, when you get back to work, could you coordinate a meeting with me, Brett, and Stacey (if she's working at that time), and we can figure out the policy issues and a (necessarily gradual) workplan for getting this done?  Best,

Ken


----- Forwarded by Kenneth M Price/English/UNL/UNEBR on 06/02/2008 04:34 PM -----
whitmanarchive <whitmanarchive@gmail.com>

06/02/2008 02:34 PM

To
kprice@unlnotes.unl.edu
cc
Subject
[wwa-changelog] Response to: fixing a date and recording source on a Russian ...





All,

Regarding Ken's observation that the information about the source copy for our Russian translation isn't readily available to users, I agree that that's a bad thing and further agree that it's a problem elsewhere on the Archive. In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of one section of the Archive where we give that kind of information: the volumes of With Walt Whitman in Camden. There, the index page has a link to "credits and edtion information," which has something like "The copy-text for this digital edition was the copy of With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. _ (pubPlace: publisher, 19__) held by Duke University Libraries." Even this, though, might not pinpoint the source copy enough, since it doesn't make absolutely explicit whether the transcriptions were done by consulting the hard copy directly or (as I suspect) in at least some cases by looking at a scanned image or photocopy, etc. Also, if there are multiple copies of a given volume at the Duke library (and maybe even if there aren't) the unique call number for the copy used would be the logical way to disambiguate.

Ken's right, I think, that a version of information about copytext is in the teiHeader, at least in many cases--I'm thinking here of the bit in the <sourceDesc> that says something like "Transcribed from our own digital image of the original manuscript". But even with things like the periodical printings and the manuscript transcriptions we don't display that text to the user. Here again, there might also be an arugment that even if we make that text visible the information isn't as full as it should be anyway--nothing about how the digital image was obtained, for example. I'm not sure whether that kind of information might be most properly added to the <sourceDesc> or put in an either an <encodingDesc>, or a <profileDesc> (neither of which elements we are in the habit of using).

In short, I'd say that we should work to make clear the specific source of our texts across the Archive, and I'd note that that includes the following sections:

  • reviews
  • contemporary criticism
  • Leaves & foreign ed'ns.
  • disciples' texts such as Good Gray Poet & Notes on WW
  • periodical printings
  • poetry MSS
  • correspondence
  • gallery (possibly)
  • articles about the Archive



It seems to me that this is a reasonably big task, not just because it's a lot of different texts/sections, but because there are several different places that the information might appear and it would behoove us to think about where to put it in connection with values such as consistency, simplicity, etc.

~ Brett

--
Posted By whitmanarchive to
wwa-changelog at 6/02/2008 01:54:00 PM

Response to: fixing a date and recording source on a Russian Translation of Whitman

All,

Regarding Ken's observation that the information about the source copy for our Russian translation isn't readily available to users, I agree that that's a bad thing and further agree that it's a problem elsewhere on the Archive. In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of one section of the Archive where we give that kind of information: the volumes of With Walt Whitman in Camden. There, the index page has a link to "credits and edtion information," which has something like "The copy-text for this digital edition was the copy of With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. _ (pubPlace: publisher, 19__) held by Duke University Libraries." Even this, though, might not pinpoint the source copy enough, since it doesn't make absolutely explicit whether the transcriptions were done by consulting the hard copy directly or (as I suspect) in at least some cases by looking at a scanned image or photocopy, etc. Also, if there are multiple copies of a given volume at the Duke library (and maybe even if there aren't) the unique call number for the copy used would be the logical way to disambiguate.

Ken's right, I think, that a version of information about copytext is in the teiHeader, at least in many cases--I'm thinking here of the bit in the <sourceDesc> that says something like "Transcribed from our own digital image of the original manuscript". But even with things like the periodical printings and the manuscript transcriptions we don't display that text to the user. Here again, there might also be an arugment that even if we make that text visible the information isn't as full as it should be anyway--nothing about how the digital image was obtained, for example. I'm not sure whether that kind of information might be most properly added to the <sourceDesc> or put in an either an <encodingDesc> or a <profileDesc> (neither of which elements we are in the habit of using).

In short, I'd say that we should work to make clear the specific source of our texts across the Archive, and I'd note that that includes the following sections:


  • reviews

  • contemporary criticism

  • Leaves & foreign ed'ns.

  • disciples' texts such as Good Gray Poet & Notes on WW

  • periodical printings

  • poetry MSS

  • correspondence

  • gallery (possibly)

  • articles about the Archive



It seems to me that this is a reasonably big task, not just because it's a lot of different texts/sections, but because there are several different places that the information might appear and it would behoove us to think about where to put it in connection with values such as consistency, simplicity, etc.

~ Brett

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

I've added the "accented e" characters to both the index page and the EAD file. I noticed that in his message Ken only capitalized the first word of the museum's name. I wasn't sure whether that was email haste or a cue that the capitalization also needed to be changed. For now, I've left capitalization as it was.

~ Brett

need to tweak the header on correspondence


All,

I just sent a copy of the scans and xml file of the Ellen Eyre letter to Ted Genoways.  In looking at the xml file, I noticed problems with the header.  

---  the copyright date should be 2008

--- the editor should be Ted Genoways (not Berthold and Price)

---the address for the distributor should be CDRH at Nebraska not IATH at Virginia

--the source desc should indicate if the transcription is done from microfilm copy or from a digital image of the ms (right?)



After sending the copy to Ted (and copying Liz and Katie on the message), Katie pointed out that the transcription I sent wasn't the most current one.  Apparently a new transcription has been made, though I doubt that the header has been fixed.  Maybe the "change"---since this is a changelog---that is most needed is to get the most up-to-date versions of files uploaded from the archive computer to the server so that we can assess whether we have systemic problems with the header on the correspondence files or not.

best,
Ken

--


Tuesday, May 20, 2008

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

Saturday, May 17, 2008

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:

Musรฉe national de la coopรฉration franco-amรฉricaine

We want an accent aigu on the first    
e in musรฉe, coopรฉration, and amรฉricaine

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

Friday, May 16, 2008

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

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

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

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

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

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Finding Aids / Library of Congress-Feinberg

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

Stacey

Thursday, May 8, 2008

"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."

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

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

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

"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

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Finding Aids / Boston Public Library

Added new images to the figures folder and updated links to new versos. We now have and are displaying to the public all of the images for this collection.

Stacey

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Changes to Periodicals Section

Updated bibliography, some headnotes, and poem pages based on proofreading and content suggestions from student workers.

--Liz

Camp 2007 goals updated

Added Sabrina's info. about her progress in adding notes to the old reviews files.

Brett

Monday, April 28, 2008

Debris in 1860 and 1867 editions of Leaves

I've revised the XML of the 1860 and 1867 editions of Leaves of Grass to reflect the editorial decision that "Debris" is a cluster of untitled poems rather than a single poem. Besides changing <lg1 type="poem">Debris</lg1> to <lg1 type="cluster">Debris</lg1> and putting <lg2 type="poem"> tags around the individual poems, I've also added <relations> to each poem. In this process, nine new work IDs were created for poems not present in the deathbed and "Debris (Poem)" was removed as a Work.

Brett

Finding Aids / Boston University

Replaced all images and added verso links with new scans received from the collection 04/10.

Stacey

April 2008

New material added to the site: two Russian translations of Whitman; the third volume of With Walt Whitman in Camden; and an editorial policy statement.