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

--