Digital Editions and Editorial Theory: Historical Texts and Documents

Week One focuses on the editorial theories of literary and non-literary works, from manuscript and printed text to digital page. Its central aims are to engage participants in the basics of scholarly editing, textual scholarship, and the hermeneutics of digital texts, alongside the theory and practice of digitisation of the textual object.

By the end of Week One, participants can expect to be able to:

Engage with the writings of traditional and emerging editorial theorists
Plan a text for editing in print and digital media, arguing for a particular editorial approach
Identify and critically analyse the polysemies of the digital text.

Week Two focuses on the practical application of editorial theory covered in Week One to historical texts and documents. Participants attending Week Two ONLY should demonstrate sufficient previous engagement with editorial theory in their application and a clear understanding and working knowledge of XML. The central aims of Week Two are to train participants in the practice(s) of transcription and mark-up of historical texts and documents, to edit and publish transcriptions, and to create manuscript descriptions using XML. The Week Two workshops offer participants the opportunity to publish with a living digital project, and take as their case study ‘Livingstone Online’; students will contribute to the ongoing transcription of Dr David Livingstone’s ‘Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa’ using project documentation, and the resulting XML produced will be published. By the end of Week Two, participants can expect to be able to: