Project Planning

This page tracks both long-range ideas that we want to act on sometime, and also the specific projects we're currently working on or have planned for the near future.

Current Planning Horizon

Overhaul of WWP and WWO interface

See punch list

See detailed work plan

Some wireframes and other preliminary design docs

Complete and publish exhibits

• Basic initial publication (February 2010?)
  • create an entry page and decide where it should live
  • create additional metadata to support navigation
  • develop derived metadata structure for use in visualization-based navigation (e.g. a timeline)
• Advanced publication (as part of web site overhaul)
  • implement derived metadata structure as a topic map
  • find permanent location for exhibits, better integrated in updated site design

WWP Institutes and Workshops

For NEH-funded IATDH seminars (2012-14):

• Plan first year of events including posting calls, developing schedules and readings
• Plan and develop supporting tools? including sandbox with display stylesheets for manuscript materials?

For WWP regular workshops, see planning page for policies, topics, etc.

Upcoming grant proposals

No specific grants planned at the moment but ideas to work with:

• Developing TEI teachers
• Resubmit NEH intertextuality proposal
• TAPAS workshops
• WWO API for visualization?
• NEH Startup grant proposals with David Smith and Kate Singer

Pool of Future Projects

Grant proposal ideas

• ODD comparison visualizer: A tool for visualizing differences between TEI customizations, based on the information in the ODD.

• MS presentation stylesheets: This would be a DHSG proposal taking advantage of the WWP's work on display of manuscript encoding, which we need to do for our own internal purposes in any case. With external funding, we could scale up our own stylesheets, tackle any difficult problems, and make them available for other projects.

WWO interface and related resources

• Faceted searching of WWO metadata as a primary entry point into WWO: instead of a simple TOC sorted by author or date, provide a way to limit and sort the list by author, date, genre, place of publication, keywords, potentially other information. This would require a separate XML structure consisting solely of metadata, which would also permit other visualizations such as a timeline or a genre map to help orient readers in the collection.

• Syllabi database: JM and JF discussed reimplementing this as an XML file rather than in MySQL, starting out modeling it in custom XML and then considering whether to migrate to TEI. Main features and development activities would include:
  • Solicit new syllabi from RWO contributors and others, in preparation for launch (since current syllabi are old)
  • Provide user input form (with database back end, outputting XML) for new syllabi
  • Permit faceted interaction similar to WWO basic text list: search/view syllabi based on authors, types of assignments, keywords
  • Provide direct links to some kind of basic information page for each WWO text (not the full text but perhaps a summary of metadata, with a link to full text for subscribers)

Work processes

• Explicit encoding planning process: We'd like to develop a stronger and more transparent planning process for our selection, encoding, and publication of new texts. Ideally we would actively solicit input from users at intervals, both via a public announcement and also via a permanent submission form on the WWP web site. We would also post a list (updated at intervals) of texts we are considering, and permit readers to add comments or rankings to help us prioritize texts for transcription. Once a text is selected for transcription, its progress (encoding, proofreading, corrections entry, second proofing, etc.) could be posted as part of a separate list. This would permit users to see which texts to expect, and would also give encoders a more direct sense of how their work affects the textbase.

Community development/interaction

• Develop manuscript editing program: This program would provide a formal framework for collaborations with scholars to edit and publish a specific manuscript. The program would have a regular call for proposals, and participating scholars would need to secure their own funding (fellowship, release time, etc.) to support their effort. We would prepare regular guidelines describing the roles and activities involved (processes of transcription, encoding, correction, annotation, etc.) and would establish scenarios both for scholars interested in learning TEI and those who need to supply a transcription in some other format.

Incipient conversations

• Jana Argersinger and Cheryl Fish, working on Sophia Peabody: they're interested in finding a way to involve WWO in a project called "Exaltadas: A Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism" which maps the origins of transcendentalism in women's writing in the early 19th century. One option might be to include some key primary sources in WWO and publish some scholarly pieces as exhibits. Long-range idea, would require funding.

Publication ideas

• So you want to write a schema...: tutorial on what we're doing when we write a schema, what they're for, why learning to write one is useful. This should start out TEI agnostic, but once the basics have been covered the document could also include basic information on using the TEI customization system to create a schema.

• A Kinder, Gentler Introduction to XML: a more detailed, slower, more humanities\- and novice-friendly introduction with better explanations, more rationales, more pictures...

• Add to the Guide: a document describing the various different large-scale structures of "argumentation" that can be created using TEI (or in some sense XML in general), with visual diagrams illustrating these. Examples include:
  • Structured transcription: i.e. an ordinary primary-source transcription in TEI
  • Argument with links to formal editorial interventions: e.g. revision campaigns, the ODD itself
  • Restructured transcription: a transcription in which the source data is represented in a restructured form (e.g. formalization of dictionary entries
  • Structured derived data: a new data structure, drawing on source data but not transcribing it
  • Structured paradata with links into it: e.g. personography; a purely independent, created data structure that is referenced from one of the above