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A hands-on introduction to the role of electronic texts and images in
humanities research and teaching. The focus of our work for the semester
will be on the collaborative design and production of a scholarly electronic
archive based on materials housed in the Library Special Collections
department here at UK -- specifically the Peal Collection, which contains
unpublished letters and manuscripts from figures such as Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, Maria Edgeworth, and the Shelleys. Students will have
opportunities to inspect these materials and make a series of
critical/editorial decisions in the course of preparing them for online
presentation. We will then publish the archive on the World Wide Web in
conjunction with the Library. By no means is this a course intended only for Romanticists. Students will learn fundamentals of creating and using electronic texts and images which they can then apply to projects in their own areas of interest. We will also survey the broad range of existing electronic resources already available for literary studies, and discuss their uses and merits in the classroom and scholarly research. Though the emphasis of the course will be practical rather than theoretical, some attention will be given to key theoretical issues in electronic media. The expectation is that all students will come away from the course with a set of relevant (and marketable) technology skills, and a publication credit for their vita. Space is limited, and preference will be given to graduate students. (Serious undergraduates should contact the instructor before registering.) This course can count towards the University's certificate in Informatics, but students need not be working toward the certificate to enroll. No prior technical knowledge is expected or assumed.
This course is a cooperative venture, and would not have been possible without the assistance and goodwill of faculty and staff from several departments of the University of Kentucky Libraries. I'd like to thank in particular Whitney Baker (Conservation Librarian), Jim Birchfield (Curator, Rare Books), Beth Kraemer (Electronic Resources Librarian), Bill Marshall (Director, Special Collections), Claire McCann (Manuscripts Librarian), Mary Molinaro (Director, Young Library), Becky Ryder (Preservation Librarian), Cindi Trainor (Electronic Resources Librarian), Eric Weig (Electronic Resources Librarian), and Paul Willis (Director of Libraries). Thanks also to Linda Cantara (Research in Computing for Humanities). |