Abstract
In this chapter we discuss the theoretical and practical considerations behind the technical components of MAPP. We review scholarship on digital archives and digital textuality, examine existing high profile projects that inhabit a similar space as MAPP, and detail the data model and software choices that resulted from this research. This chapter also provides a brief introduction to Drupal, a highly customizable Content Management System, and how we configured it to meet our desired scholarly outcomes. We conclude with plans for future development that will enable greater interoperability and reuse of our archive.
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Notes
- 1.
This list is in no way comprehensive, but does include important examples of digital humanities archive-building projects across a range of individual writers, groups of authors, and scholarly purposes. For more examples and for further discussion of these projects, please see Appendix B: A Field Guide to Digital Projects.
- 2.
Price continues: ‘a digital thematic research collection is the closest thing to the laboratory that we have in the humanities – the place where necessary research materials are amassed’ (2009, para. 26). While a digital laboratory for archival research is certainly one of our aims with MAPP, we nevertheless prefer the simpler ‘critical digital archive’ to describe our work.
- 3.
See Wilson 2014, p. 83.
- 4.
See our chapter 4 in this book on collaborative methods.
- 5.
The irony of using a print publication to expose the argument of a digital production is not lost upon us.
- 6.
See our team’s meditations on the monograph in Chapter 4.
- 7.
For more on how we have used MAPP in teaching, see Chapter 6.
- 8.
Any custom software platform would take years to reach feature parity with other platforms, many of which already boast vibrant communities of users and developers.
- 9.
- 10.
Despite the concerns about CMSes cited earlier, any digital archive needs some way to manage content. The key is to be thoughtful about how one is implemented.
- 11.
Because, however, our model is consistent in many aspects with FRBR, when we move to the phase in which we will expose our records as linked open data, we have already in place a metadata standard to which we can easily map.
- 12.
The possibilities for data visualisations of correspondence networks, demonstrated by projects like Mapping the Republic of Letters, provide a compelling reason to treat correspondence separately.
- 13.
Canadian because our primary granting agency is based in Canada.
- 14.
For a good introduction to network graphs and their usefulness in humanities research, we highly recommend Weingart 2016.
- 15.
The authoritative record for Virginia Woolf is maintained by VIAF.
- 16.
Both of these projects are part of the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC), which is the group, led by Laura Mandell and Tanya Clement, that developed Collex.
- 17.
Further details on these related topics are beyond the scope of this chapter. For a good introduction, see Börner and Polley 2014.
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Battershill, C., Southworth, H., Staveley, A., Widner, M., Willson Gordon, E., Wilson, N. (2017). Building a Critical Digital Archive. In: Scholarly Adventures in Digital Humanities. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47211-9_5
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