Examining modeling choices from exemplary editions using what we know now.

New perspectives on exemplary editions

In the past two weeks, we have defined the digital edition as a workstation that makes meaningful use of technology to address research questions, explore research materials, and share research results.

You have seen how research questions are fundamental in shaping the edition: they define modeling choices and inform the editorial methodology.

Talk lab

Let’s reflect on some existing digital editions taking into account what we have learned. Navigate to the Institute’s overview of exemplary editions and select one edition from the list. Alternatively, you can pick an edition that is not on the list. Examine the edition with the following two questions in mind:

1. Which research question(s) does the edition addresses?
2. How do(es) the research question(s) tranlate to the edition’s modeling and design choices?

You can think of:

• Scope of the edition;
• Selection of material;
• Presentation of material (primary and secondary);
• Interface(s);
• Navigation;
• Search functionality;
• Audiences;
• Accessibility (human/machine);
• Documentation
  • For collaborators: encoding guidelines, technical documentation, …
  • For users: introductory texts, mouse-overs, API access, …
• Source resources, software, and standards:
  • Databases and data models;
  • Transcription princiciples, text markup;
  • Images;
  • Version control;
• Visualizations:
  • Networks;
  • Maps;
  • …
• Citation, permalinks;
• Sustainability, long-term accessibility and reusability of the material, licensing;
• Outreach:
  • Pedagogical objectives;
  • (Social) media;
  • Spin-offs.

References

• RIDE, a review journal for digital scholarly editions and resources;
• Greta Franzini et al, The Digital Editions Catalogue App (Dig-Ed-Cat);
• Patrick Sahle, A Catalog of Digital Scholarly Editions.