Project Description:
With a few notable exceptions, the study of Irish-America
has been biased by a focus on Irish-Americans in urban
settings east of the Mississippi, a bias that has
resulted in a rather warped interpretation of the
whole Irish-American experience. This project is aimed
at countering this bias by producing a rigorous and
expandable collection of scholarly materials (researched
essays, bibliographies, biographies, histories, etc.)
that draw their subjects from an electronic collection
of rare and out of print Irish-American literary,
cultural, and historical texts from the American West.
The two principal goals of this project are (A) to
bring the wealth of western Irish-American literary
and historical writing to the Internet in a scholarly
project and (B) to counter the existing bias in Irish-American
scholarship, by providing an online collection of
primary source material and scholarly articles devoted
to exploring the works of western Irish-Americans.
 The
heart of the project is the electronic text archive
consisting of rare and out-of-print works of Irish-American
writing from western America including, but not necessarily
limited to, works of fiction, drama, poetry, journalism,
biography, nonfiction, and commentary. The electronic
text collection provides the basis and subject matter
for the specifically research-orientated component
of the project, which is a constantly growing collection
of scholarly works investigating the texts archived
in the collection. One of the many unique and valuable
features of this project is that the academic essays
published in the online collection are "hyper-linked"
to the primary texts in the archive. The result of
this linkage allows readers to immediately access
the scholar's primary source material. The overall
aim of the project is, thus, to provide both access
to and scholarly interpretation of the material, thus,
providing readers with both first-hand experience
(through the primary texts) and scholarly insight
(through the research-based articles).
In addition to providing access and interpretation,
the texts at the heart of the project are viewable
over the Internet in HTML and will also be (as the
project progresses) available for download in encoded
form (according to the Text Encoding Initiative [TEI]
standards). The process developed by the IAW project
team converts styled Microsoft Word files into well-formed,
valid XML files. The process automates all XML tagging
and simplifies the editing of texts in preparation
for database archiving. Past encoding projects have
had to rely on training project editors (usually students)
in eXtensible Markup Language. As students graduate
and move on, encoding projects frequently have to
invest time and energy into training new interns.
Also problematic is the potential for human error
inherent in any hand-coding. The process developed
by the IAW team is such that text editors need only
be familiar with MS Word. A one page set of guidelines
for editing texts provides all the necessary information
and there is virtually no training. Once the files
are proof read and edited, they are run through a
computer process that, in a matter of minutes converts
a 300 page MS Word manuscript into well-formed and
valid XML. The process involves the use of several
open source applications and a custom made XSL Transformation
that was designed to produce XML compliant with the
appropriate TEI Document Type Definition. Where appropriate
materials in the collection are hyperlinked to other
resources outside of the collection. With such additions,
the archive of digital texts is more than simply a
"warehouse" of primary materials, being
instead a project of scholarly import and pedagogical
use as well.
Core personnel:
- Matthew Jockers (Consulting Assistant Professor
and Academic Technology Specialist in English, Stanford)
- Glen Worthey (Digital Humanities Librarian, Green
Library, Stanford)
Visit the project website at the Western Institute for Irish Studies
Visit the Irish-American Literature class website (English 139E)
Read about the Summer 2003 conferences
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