Resources

[ A+ ] /[ A- ]

A Guide to Documentary Editing – Online Edition

From the UVA Press: “For more than twenty years, A Guide to Documentary Editing has proven an invaluable tool for scholarly editors, editors-in-training, readers of documentary editions, and other students of American history and literature. This new, extensively revised edition of the Guide arrives in the midst of great change in the field. In addition to exploring fully the increasingly central role electronic technology plays in the editing process, this edition provides the most current treatment of the craft’s fundamental issues. These include locating and collecting sources, transcribing source texts, conventions of textual treatment, dealing with nontextual elements, and preparing editions for publishers. The documentary-editing environment is more vibrant than ever, and the authors draw on this wealth of activity to include numerous examples of the Guide’s principles in practice.” (http://gde.upress.virginia.edu)

Model Editions Partnership (MEP)

The purpose of the Model Editions Partnership is to explore ways of creating editions of historical documents which meet the standards scholars traditionally use in preparing printed editions. Equally important is our goal of making these materials more widely available via the Web. Nine of the experimental mini-editions are based on full-text searchable document transcriptions; two are based on document images; and one is based on both images and text. For more information, please visit the MEP site and TEI’s page.

SEDIT-L

The Scholarly Editing Forum (SEDIT-L) is an email discussion list for those interested in documentary editing and related subjects. It has about 250 subscribers worldwide, including most of the membership of the ADE. It provides a fast and efficient means of communicating with other documentary editors, allowing subscribers to share news and announcements, discuss common problems, and mobilize in response to issues of concern.

To subscribe to SEDIT-L on the web, go to the list’s website at https://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=SEDIT-L and select the link “Join or leave the list” and submit the resulting form. Or subscribe by email by sending a message to listserv@listserv.umd.edu, with the subject line blank and the following text in the message body: ‘sub sedit-l your full name’. The host of the list is the University of Maryland and the list manager is Erica Zimmer (ezimmer@bu.edu).

Funding for Editions

Most documentary editing projects receive federal grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most also get funding from their host institutions and raise funds from private foundations, individuals and in some cases state agencies. Virtually all of the letterpress editions are published by university presses, often with the aid of subvention funding and grants.

Related Links