Shakespeare Quartos Archive Demo 12/16

Please mark your calendars, bring your lunch, and join us in the Board Room for one of two back-to-back introductions and demonstrations of the Shakespeare Quartos Archive.

Date: Wed. Dec. 16

Time: 11:30 - 12:30; repeated 12:30 - 1:30

Location: Folger Board Room

URL: http://www.quartos.org/

Background:

Funding for the one-year pilot project was provided by a JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant: http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/JISC.html.

Our aim was to both demonstrate how the quartos could be compared and analyzed if fully transcribed and presented in a single user interface, and to create a single online collection of page images for at least one copy from every pre-1642 edition of the plays.

The main site at http://www.quartos.org/ now includes 32 image sets and transcriptions of the 5 pre-1642 editions of Hamlet. The site includes copies owned by the Bodleian, British Library, Folger, Huntington, National Library of Scotland, and University of Edinburgh. Hamlet texts are presented in a prototype user interface designed by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Transcription was overseen by staff at the Oxford Digital Library, with help from Folger and British Library staff and interns. We had help in evaluation and planning from many Folger staff, readers, teachers, and friends; and also from faculty and students at the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham.

The British Library’s companion site “Shakespeare in Quarto” was launched in 2004 with page images (but no transcriptions) for each pre-1642 quarto edition of Shakespeare’s plays owned by the British Library. As part of the SQA project, this site was updated so that it now includes at least one image set per edition of each of the 21 Shakespeare plays printed in quarto. Digital images for this portion of the project were provided by the Bodleian, Edinburgh, Folger, and National Library of Scotland. Here’s a link: http://special-1.bl.uk/treasures/SiqDiscovery/ui/search.aspx. And here’s a description of the new material added: http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/partners.html.

Hope to see you on the 16th! In the meantime I’m happy to answer any questions or help you get started if you’d like to dive right in on your own.


best,

Jim Kuhn