Electronic Textual Editing Course Bridges Past and Future
How do you preserve the concept of a printed book or manuscript when future generations might never hold a hardcover or paperback? H. Lewis Ulman, Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean in the College of Humanities, asked himself this question in 2003 when Google began digitizing books so they could be accessed and viewed online. He set out to find a solution and, in the process, created an opportunity for students to help preserve historical documents that otherwise might not be available online.
Ulman’s solution was to develop a course that would not only digitize historical documents, but also help students to “understand the way that our cultural heritage in manuscript materials is related to digital media." He collaborated with the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (RBMS).
Rapidly advancing technology also made this project possible. "In the past," said Ulman, “it wasn't very practical to use historical documents in this way until we had the ability to digitize high resolution images…and when that became available, I felt that it was important to incorporate ‘hands-on’ work with rare manuscripts into an English studies curriculum."
Ulman explored which format would best encode the content. He ultimately chose the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines (TEI), an XML markup language used to describe the textual structure and content of a document. For instance, in a daily journal, each journal entry has its own tag, and proper names are enclosed in a tag that identifies it as a name and provides a standard version of the name.
When Ulman started the project, XML editing software was far from inexpensive, averaging several thousand dollars for a single license. However, he is now able to buy a classroom license to distribute to students for a few hundred dollars, which allows students to install the XML software on their home computers as well. Ulman currently uses the XML editing software Oxygen, which he distributes to all of his students for use in both the classroom and at home.
The Result
After choosing the necessary technologies and tools, Ulman created a curriculum that allowed students to participate in restoring and digitizing historic documents. While most of his courses used manuscript materials in the collection of the RBMS, one group of students brought in vintage letters from home. Ulman said that using these personal documents “created some incredibly neat learning opportunities, as well as challenges, for the students." Ulman’s more recent students focused on a handwritten journal from a native Ohioan’s journey to Europe in 1851. As this was a large project, two consecutive quarters of classes worked to complete it.
Although Ulman’s main objective for the course was to digitize these works and publish them for posterity, he also wanted the students to gain an understanding of the importance of physical textual artifacts, such as books, that may be fading away. Ulman also hopes that students recognize the importance of editorial decisions when transcribing and digitizing an original source. Ulman says he wants students "to be able to think critically about the nature of the reproduction, whether physical or online, and how it creates a new interpretation of the text."
Plans for the Future
Ulman plans to continue offering English 569 (Digital Media and English Studies) with concentration on other historical documents. He would also like to include audio tracks , as a supplement to the text of future editions, as well as video of the editing process and reflections of students who participated.
More Information
For further information on Professor H. Lewis Ulman, please visit his website at http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/ulman1/.
To learn more about the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, please visit their website at http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/.
To learn more about the Text Encoding Initiative and XML, please visit these websites at http://www.tei-c.org/ and http://www.xml.com.
Article by Sam Eilerman