Jul 25, 2007
Textual Commentary
One of my favorite activity in the archive was to work on the marginalia of the manuscript - mostly just trying to decipher but often thinking through the gloss it 'added' to the text.
Thinking about digital archives, I have been keenly aware that this 'conversation on the margins' must be incorporated into the text - along with layers, annotations etc - if we are to ever fully realize the promise of hypertext. [Basically think of having the Discussion and the History sections of any wikipedia entry remaining integral to the presentation of the text while adding commenting].
We can at least take one step forward on that project today: The Institute of the Book's newly released Open Source WordPress theme, CommentPress 1.0. It allows one to display a text with the unique ability that interlocutors can discuss down to an individual paragraph. The genius of course is that in breaking the text up in such a manner, it makes the text far more legible and readable online.
This is a first step but I think that the Future of the Book folks deserve a huge round of applause. In terms of application for historians, an easy one is the ability to workshop a paper - elicit comments, suggestions, etc.
Some of us from the history blogging world will be doing a roundtable at the AHA in January. Our intention is to present our panel work at Memory Matters. On that site, in the coming months, we will expand, discuss, debate some of the themes that underline our research and which we will presenting at AHA. Hopefully, this will serve as an example - even if it ends up being a cautionary one - of extending the ways in which we share and learn.
[x-posted at ChapatiMystery]
Thinking about digital archives, I have been keenly aware that this 'conversation on the margins' must be incorporated into the text - along with layers, annotations etc - if we are to ever fully realize the promise of hypertext. [Basically think of having the Discussion and the History sections of any wikipedia entry remaining integral to the presentation of the text while adding commenting].
We can at least take one step forward on that project today: The Institute of the Book's newly released Open Source WordPress theme, CommentPress 1.0. It allows one to display a text with the unique ability that interlocutors can discuss down to an individual paragraph. The genius of course is that in breaking the text up in such a manner, it makes the text far more legible and readable online.
This is a first step but I think that the Future of the Book folks deserve a huge round of applause. In terms of application for historians, an easy one is the ability to workshop a paper - elicit comments, suggestions, etc.
Some of us from the history blogging world will be doing a roundtable at the AHA in January. Our intention is to present our panel work at Memory Matters. On that site, in the coming months, we will expand, discuss, debate some of the themes that underline our research and which we will presenting at AHA. Hopefully, this will serve as an example - even if it ends up being a cautionary one - of extending the ways in which we share and learn.
[x-posted at ChapatiMystery]