[XML4Lib] XML and the launch of Mark Twain Project Online

[Lisa Schiff]

Hi Everyone,

 

Apologies in advance to any who may have received this announcement on
another list.  

 

I'm happy to announce that today the University of California launched
the beta version of Mark Twain Project Online
(http://www.marktwainproject.org), a digital critical edition of the
writings of Mark Twain, providing access to more than twenty-three
hundred letters written between 1853 and 1880, including nearly 100
facsimiles of originals.  XML was a central enabling technology for this
project as the content was encoded in TEI P4, the metadata was captured
in METS records, and the search, browse and display functionality was
built using the XTF (the eXtensible Text Framework).  More details can
be found in the press release pasted in below and attached.

 

Thanks,

Lisa
-----------------------------------------------

Lisa Schiff

Technical Lead, Publishing

California Digital Library

1111 Broadway, Suite 1450

Oakland, CA 94607

510-987-0881 (t)

510-987-9590 (f)

www.cdlib.org

lisa.schiff at ucop.edu

 

Press Contact: Laura Cerruti | (510) 643-9793 | Fax: (510) 643-7127 |
Email: laura.cerruti at ucpress.edu 2120 Berkeley Way | Berkeley,
California 94704 For Immediate Release: For More Information: 

November 1, 2007 Sharon K. Goetz, Mark Twain Papers & Project 

2195 Hearst Ave, Berkeley, CA 94720-6400 

mtpo at library.berkeley.edu 

University of California launches Mark Twain Project Online 

Access to texts, notes, and facsimiles available online at no charge to
institutions or individuals 

BERKELEY, Calif. - November 1, 2007 - University of California is
pleased to announce the launch of the beta version of Mark Twain Project
Online (www.marktwainproject.org), a digital critical edition of the
writings of Mark Twain. 

Mark Twain Project Online (MTPO) applies innovative technology to more
than four decades of archival research by expert editors at the Mark
Twain Project. It offers unfettered, intuitive access to reliable texts,
accurate and exhaustive notes, and the most recently discovered letters
and documents. 

MTPO is a joint undertaking of the Mark Twain Papers and Project, the
California Digital Library, and University of California Press. It is
funded in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities to the Mark Twain Project, and is supported by a number of
institutions and individuals. The Mark Twain Foundation, a perpetual
charitable trust that possesses the publication rights to all of Mark
Twain's writings, has given UC Press and Mark Twain Project Online
exclusive rights to publish copyright-protected writings by Mark Twain,
both in print and electronically. 

At beta launch, the site will include more than twenty-three hundred
letters written between 1853 and 1880, including nearly 100 facsimiles
of originals. Users will also be able to search for information about
Mark Twain's complete correspondence across his entire life, including
letters to him and his family. In 

future years, the site will release more of the nearly ten thousand
known letters, including many never-before published; electronic
editions of many of Mark Twain's most famous literary works; the most
complete catalog of Mark Twain's writings currently available; and, in
2010, Mark Twain's Autobiography, one of the most eagerly-awaited
posthumous publications in literary history. 

"Mark Twain Project Online is an extraordinary resource for scholars,
teachers, and ordinary readers. Materials that previously could be
examined only by scholars fortunate enough to be able to visit the Mark
Twain Project in The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley will now be
available worldwide to anyone with an interest in Mark Twain-and that's
a cause for celebration, " Shelley Fisher Fishkin, author of Lighting
Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture,
said. 

The customizable interface provides a powerful reading and research
experience. The site offers researchers unprecedented access to
authoritative transcriptions of Mark Twain's writings and the
opportunity to compare those transcriptions side by side with facsimiles
when available. Researchers can gather and store digital citations as
well as links to selected documents, images, and other resources. This
suite of features is enabled through the complex integration of several
technical components: 

 

* Rich metadata captured in the form of METS objects (Metadata Encoding
and Transmission Standard) for letter transcriptions, catalog entries of
letters, and collections of letters; 

 

* Letters encoded in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) P4, extended for
this project to accommodate associated editorial matter, including
explanatory notes and textual commentary; 

 

* A robust content search and display environment implemented with the
CDL's XTF (eXtensible Text Framework) technology, taking advantage of
its hierarchical faceting abilities and extending the functionality to
support granular citation collection and the dynamic linking of
editorial matter and letter content. 

 

The site demonstrates the great advantages of digital presentation and
will be a model for future digital scholarly work. "The Mark Twain
Project Online is an exciting initiative that will make a fundamental
literary and biographical archive available to scholars and students.
MTPO offers easy access through a sophisticated web interface and
growing and comprehensive scope. This project has the potential to
become a model for Web accessibility to foundational scholarly
resources," says Richard Terdiman, Professor, Literature, UC Santa Cruz
and Co-Editor of the FlashPoints series in Literary Studies. 

For more information about Mark Twain Project Online, including more
about the making of this landmark online publication, please visit
http://www.marktwainproject.org/ 

# # # 

 

 

 

 

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