Report on the Docents’ Orientation to the Digital First Folio by Mike Neuman

First-time visitors to the Folger are sometimes disappointed to learn that they are not permitted to browse through the Library’s rare resources. Some consolation, though, is available at the kiosk in the Exhibition Hall with its fine example of a First Folio and its digital surrogate that permits browsing and provides many helpful notes. On October 27th, a group of nine docents who offer detailed coverage of the First Folio on their tours gave sample presentations to approximately two dozen of their colleagues who had gathered to learn from and respond to their fellows. Altogether, then, more than half of the docent community was on hand for the event.

The series of five-minute presentations began with an orientation by Jim Kuhn, Folger’s Head of Collection Information Services, on the interface to and features of the digital First Folio. He was followed by the following presentations that, in general, progressed from details on individual pages of the First Folio to broader issues of background:

 Ben Jonson’s tribute to Shakespeare (Larry Plotkin)
 "BI" as Ben Jonson (EJ Truax)
 The Droeshout engraving (Dottie Boerner)
 Lack of a prologue in R&J and problems in editing Shakespeare (Amy Thompson)
 Table of contents: 35 titles for 36 plays (Elaine Miller)
 Featured actors of the King’s Men (Gina Guglielmo)
 The first page of R&J and limited space at the start of a quire (Mike Neuman)
 The law of printing and presenting plays in Shakespeare’s time (Martha Patterson)
 Why do we have so many First Folios? (Sarah Rosenbaum)

Charlton Hinman, Peter Blayney, and Paul Collins—authors of influential works on the First Folio--were often cited, and two question-and-answer sessions were held along the way.
Outside on this late October day, the weather was dreary, but gathered around the light of the First Folio, the docents by all reports had a cozy and stimulating time.

Digital Docent Dispatch from Diane Shages and Caitlin

Well, Docents, the printed and emailed Docent Dispatch is the last as we have known it.

Now that Caitlin has set up this Docent Blog and has trained at least some of us in accessing it (and is willing to teach others), the Docent Board has decided it is time to GO GREEN! Many of us will miss opening our mailboxes to find the Dispatch and holding it in our hands. However, there are some positives to this: information will be more current than has often been the case in the past, and we don’t need to worry about losing track of the paper Dispatch because the contents will always be available on the Blog.

Further, JC will continue to send out the monthly Calendar with other tidbits of useful information. For the Docents who do not have computers, we hope this will keep you in the loop. Also, we will continue to call those Docents who are not on the computer with important information which might not make the Calendar.

The next training session will take place in January. Stay tuned for details.

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

Digital First Folio

Dear Fellow Docents,

I'm writing to invite you to a training session on the digital First Folio to be held Tuesday, October 27th at 1:00 pm at the kiosk in the exhibition hall.

The session will consist of an orientation to the interface of the digital Folio and a survey of the ways some of our colleagues use those features to present background on such topics as
- the prominence of Ben Jonson,
- the Droeshout engraving,
- the list of actors,
- the table of contents of the plays,
- the lack of a prologue at the start of "Romeo and Juliet,"
- the law of printing and presenting plays, and
- the value of our having so many First Folios.
Time for Q&A will follow the presentations.

The upcoming session will be based on what several of us learned from one another at a discussion of the First Folio held last month, and we hope you can join us on the 27th.

Please respond to neuman@georgetown.edu (that is, do not reply to Caitlin's message) if you think you may be willing and able to attend. Your reply does not constitute a commitment, but it will help us gauge interest and set the format.

Best wishes,
Mike Neuman