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ENGL-GA.2957-1 Digital Literary Texts- Fall, 2013
Project #2: Technical Notes Page for your site
Summary:
It is important to post a page on your site with technical information about the site and the digitized materials. Please include all of the following points which are relevant to your site as well as any other additional technical descriptions or information which you believe would assist your user to understand how the site is constructed:
Include in an ‘About’ page, a ‘Technical Notes’ page, or anywhere else that is appropriate within your site design:
- Describe your source materials, including answering the following questions: what have you digitized, where is the physical copy located (or where did you obtain it), and why is it significant?
- Describe your rationale for the project from a scholarly perspective, explaining:
- what you hope to achieve in your site
- how the design and layout of the site further these ends
- who the site is designed for
- to what purpose you have used TEI, and any TEI decisions that need to be clarified
- How your site reflects current interests and what have you done to ensure it is well positioned to meet the changing interests of your audience
(It is expected that you will include information about the building or technological decisions you have made, or strategies you have employed, as part of your description: the technology and the scholarly should come together in this reflection.)
- Acknowledgements: to Fales (or equivalent library, person, creator), but also to any other sites etc. that have been particularly influential/inspiring in the making of your own.
- Metadata about the content:
- a clear list of all of the metadata fields that you have included with definitions (e.g. "all dimensions are measured in cm ")
- a statement about where the user can find the metadata within the site
- Metadata about your images:
- At what resolution did you capture your images and in what format? (e.g." TIFF images at 600 dpi")
- Which format are you using for the thumbnails and at what size? (e.g. "JPG images at 2"x3")
- Which format are you using for the medium-sized images and at what size?" (e.g. JPG images at 5"x7")
- If you are using additional higher resolution images, name the format and approximate file sizes (e.g. JPG images; average size of 25 MB each)
- Information about the WordPress implementation:
- the URL for the opening page
- the name of the theme that you selected and the source
- child-theme name
- A list of php scripts that you modified and why (e.g. "footer.php was modified to cite the Fales Archive as the source for the materials used")
- File naming conventions: Explain your file naming conventions; for example, in one class study: EBB_001 is the prefix for each filename associated with document #1 from the Elizabeth Barrett Browning book of poetry: EBB_001.txt, EBB_001.xml, EBB_001.tiff, and EBB_001.jpg refer respectively to the transcription, TEI-encoded file, tiff image and jpg image. This will also allow users to use the URLs to find specific information if needed as well. Any .css or .xsl files that reflect a specific manuscript or manuscript series should also be cited and named accordingly.
- Content files associated with the site in addition to the images
- e.g. transcriptions ("each image is accompanied by a transcription in a plain text or .txt file which is available by clicking on the appropriate link near the image" etc.)
- e.g. TEI/XML - to be discussed!
- e.g. access to other editions
- Open source vs. proprietary software: it would be worth noting which software you used is open source and which is propretary (e.g. Adobe's Photoshop is proprietary; Wordpress is open source)
- Details about specific characters (an 18th century "double s" for example) and any typographical issues could be described here along with the methodology used to resolve these issues.
Examples of current technical "About" pages are posted to the Resources page