What is the historical context of your documents? In other words, what lead to the creation of these texts? What was happening politically, socially, etc.?
Where did the documents come from, and where are they housed (e.g., archives, repositories, etc.)?
Why are these documents significant? In other words, why do you think they need to be made more accessible to your intended audience? How might one’s knowledge be enhanced by these texts?
How do you think the documents should be organized (e.g., chronologically, thematically), and why?
At this time, how do you think the documents should be transcribed? Do they need to be translated? Why or why not?
Do you think you will change the text in any way, and how will you document changes to the source text? Why or why not?
What forms of apparatus do you think will be necessary for these documents, and why?
What forms of publication might the documents require (dataset, book, website)?
Analyzing Your Documents’ Format Are you working with documents in a variety of different formats? What are the unique characteristics of these documents that need to be captured? For example, do your documents consist of text exclusively? Text with images? Do all your documents feature letterhead or titles? How about the format and placement of dates? Do all your documents have similar formatting, such as grids, tables, columns, rows, paragraphs, etc.? Are your documents typed or handwritten? Do you see any challenges or potential problems associated with the formats of your documents?
Analyzing the Content of Your Documents Are the most important characteristics of your documents found in the names, facts, and other historical content? Or are the most important characteristics of your documents found in their textual features, such as changes that may have occurred across time? Why do you believe these are the most important characteristics of your documents?
Analyzing the Focus of Your Documents What is the primary narrative, or “the main story” communicated in your documents? How does the information in your documents support or accentuate that story? For example, are you telling the story of a well-known historical figure? Are you filling in information gaps within the stories of under-represented people groups within a larger historical narrative?
Analyzing the Source of Your Documents What is the primary narrative, or “the main story” communicated in your documents? How does the information in your documents support or accentuate that story? For example, are you telling the story of a well-known historical figure? Are you filling in information gaps within the stories of under-represented people groups within a larger historical narrative?
Analyzing the Significance of Your Documents Why are you choosing to publish an editorial edition consisting of these particular historical documents? What research value do they have, and why might someone want to read them?
Step 1: List of Features First, make a list of the items or features of your project that you find most exciting. This list may include items related to your specific content as well as specific features, such as offering access to documents that have previously been ignored or overlooked.
Step 2: How Will Your Primary Target Audience Interact With Your Site? Second, how do you imagine members of your primary target audience might use your site? Will your site permit users to search for documents or download materials? Once you’ve identified the various ways that members of your primary target audience might use your site, rank each item on your list based on its importance to your project.
Step 3: Create Personas
Third, create personas of three imaginary audience members who are also interested in what you wrote above–for example, a high school teacher, a Ph.D. student working on a dissertation, and a genealogist interested in searching for family members. Try to create personas that are distinct. For example, avoid creating similar personas, such as “an Americanist,” “an Early-Modernist,” and “a post-modernist” because these offer very little distinction within the broad swath of audience possibilities. Write their “names” and describe their personalities below (e.g., likes/dislikes, occupation, education level, etc.).
Step 4: Building the Trust of Your Target Audience After building profiles for three imaginary members of your target audience, think about how you might build trust and maintain engagement for each of these imaginary audience members. Why would these audience members want to visit your site? What will they do once they’ve navigated to your site (e.g., explore a database? Read primary source material? Connect with others in the community? etc.) What are some important pieces of information or titles of pages that should be included on your site?
Step 5: Establish Value Finally, return to your list of features of your project that you find most exciting. Based on this list, consider the “argument” that your project offers to the community. In other words, why should your audience be interested in the documents you plan to publish? What is their value? Why is your project important? Then consider whether the features of your project and your argument align with the needs and interests of your primary target audience. If so, how exactly are they aligned? And if not, where might you tweak your focus to better meet the needs and expectations of your primary target audience?
Thinking about your documents, what accessibility concerns do you think will be the most challenging for you to address when you create your own project? Why?
What QC procedures do you anticipate incorporating into your project?
At what points in your project will you implement these QC procedures?
Who will be responsible for implementing and carrying out these procedures?
What kind of expertise will be necessary to conduct the various QC procedures?
What questions do you bring to your documents? Does your material lend itself to specific research questions that might serve as an organizing principle for your annotations?
Does the material you plan to publish generally require recovery-style or explanatory notes?
What will be the practical limits of the information you plan to annotate? For example, do you have funding for travel to archives, if necessary? Do you have access to databases, such as historical newspapers, genealogical databases?
Are you using a print or digital or hybrid workflow? If you’re working on a digital edition, what kinds of notes could be replaced with data pointers or other data formats?
If you are creating a digital edition, what are the most essential semantic (encoded) annotations that ought to be included?
Revisit the requests for information that are set forth in grant guidelines by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, or a grant of your choice. How would you respond? Are there elements you still need to consider?
Archives Thinking about archival resources, how important are they to your project? What tactics will you use to develop an archival search plan, and which databases do you think will be the most useful? Add any ideas that you might have about how to apply the general tips above to your project.
Manuscript Dealers and Auctions How important a resource will manuscript dealers and auction houses be to your search effort? What tactics will you use to locate documents using this resource? Are there any specific tips that you want to remember from the section above that will help you tailor this to your project?
Published Sources How important do you think published sources (books, journals, newspapers) will be to your search? What tactics and resources do you think will be the most helpful in finding documents for your project?
Public Outreach How important will be public outreach (crowdsourcing, donations, etc.) to your search for documents? What types of public outreach do you think will work best for your project? What tips do you think make the most sense for your work?
Other Resources Did you think of any other resources that might work for your project that could help you find more documents? Enter ideas here.
Describe Your Documents Write a paragraph that describes your documents in terms of organization. How many documents do you have? How do their characteristics affect the ways that you might organize them? (ex. a collection of 20,000 letters vs. 10,000 pages of diaries kept over 10 years).
How Will You Divide Your Documents? Thinking about your publication, how do you plan to make meaningful divisions in your collection? If you are going to publish a multi-volume book, for example, will you assign each document to a specific volume? If you are creating a digital edition, will there be divisions in the content– whether by format (photographs, documents, audio/visual) or by physical location (materials might be maintained in archival collections) or by some other quality?
What Information Would You Need to Locate or Distinguish Between Documents? Think about a specific document in your collection. If you wanted to locate it, how would you look for it? What facts about the document come to mind when you think about searches? Now think about a group of documents, and whether the same search strategy would work to locate them. Describe the data that you think are the most useful for finding content in your collection.
How Will You Sort Your Documents? How will you sort your documents? This can be physically, if you have original documents or copies, or intellectually, if you are producing browsing lists, ordering documents in a print volume, or building a spreadsheet. If you are using chronology as an organizing principle, what are your plans if multiple documents have the same date, or if documents are missing all or parts of dates? If you are using another organizing principle, how will you deal with duplicated or missing data?
Describe Your Metadata Plan Describe your metadata plan in general. Will you use a standard metadata scheme or develop your own? Think about descriptive metadata as well as administrative metadata. Will you be using controlled vocabularies to keep your data clean?
What System Will You Use to Organize Your Documents? Have you selected an organization system that will work for your project? If so describe what you are planning on using and why you selected it. What do you think will be the benefits and drawbacks of using it for your specific project?
About Your Project Describe your project and its goal(s) in one or two sentences.
What types of document formats or genres are in your collection?
Considering Document Formats Will you include all document genres in your edition? Which types of documents (correspondence, interviews, recordings, diaries) will you include in your edition, and which types (if any) will you exclude? Draft a few sentences that lay our your decisions.
Considering the Chronology of Your Documents Are there any chronological periods that you will use to select documents? Any eras where you will be more or less likely to select documents. Will you limit your edition to a specific set of years? Draft a few sentences that explain your process.
Considering the Role of Geography in Your Documents Does geography play a role in your selection? Are there documents from or about specific places that you will include or exclude? Will your edition use geography as a selection tool? Draft a few sentences to describe your decisions.
Considering the Availability of Documents Does the availability of the document elsewhere impact your decision on whether or not to include it in your edition? Will you exclude documents that have been published elsewhere or are widely available? Or will availability not impact your decision? Draft a few sentences that explain your decisions.
Considering the Physical Location of Your Documents Will your edition publish documents that exist in a single archive or collection? Does the physical location of the documents matter when you are selecting them for publication? Draft a few sentences that explain your decision.
Considering the Content of Your Documents Are there any categories of documents that you will exclude from selection without reading them? Incoming letters? Minutes of a meeting that your subject did not attend? Personal letters? Draft a few sentences that describe your process.
Will you exclude documents after reading them that are routine, duplicate the contents of others, or are otherwise less historically important? Draft a few sentences that describe the process you will use to identify these documents.
Will you include drafts and variant versions of the same document? If not, which will you select for publication? Draft a few sentence that explain your decision.
Are there any themes, events, or other criteria that you will use to help select documents for your edition? What subjects or types of documents will you prefer over others? Draft a few sentences that explore how you will decide which documents are historically significant and will be selected for publication.
Other Considerations If there are other factors that will impact your selection decisions, please describe them here in a few sentences.
Considering the Content of Your Documents What process will you use to select documents? Who will review them and how will you make decisions? Describe the process that you plan to use in a few sentences.
What Will Your Edition Look? (Your Project's Goals Practice) Content-Specific Goals Add each content-specific goal you have in mind for your project.
Publication Goals Add each publication goal you have in mind for your project.
Practical Goals Add each practical goal you have in mind for your project.
What Will Your Edition Look Like? (How Will Your Present Your Documents? Practice) Outline your thoughts about how you plan to publish your documents. Reflecting on the following questions may help guide your response:
Considering the pros and cons of image editions and transcribed editions, which type of edition makes the most sense for your documents? Can you list the arguments for publishing an image-based edition versus a transcription-based edition? Do you think there are good arguments for including both images and transcriptions? Are there drawbacks to any of the text presentation options that you should consider? Thinking about some of the examples that we looked at, would your documents benefit more from some of the presentation options than others?
What Will Your Edition Look Like? (Your Perspective Practice) Provide a short summary of your project goals.
Explain how your goals influence decisions about the type of edition you plan to publish.
Describe which publication platforms make the most sense to you at this point.
What type of edition will your project be? Print or digital?
If you are doing a print edition, which characteristics of print editions do you think will apply to your project? Which of these characteristics do you think will be the most challenging for you? Why?
If you are doing a digital edition, what roles do you think transcription will play in your project? What do you think will be the most challenging aspect of transcription for you? Why?
Select the method(s) you will use to create your transcriptions. Try to articulate the pros and cons of the method(s) you have chosen and what you think that you will need to do to ensure that you have high quality transcriptions.
Describe the transcription style you plan to use.
Now that you have described your transcription style, let’s put into practice using the passage from our sample paragraph.
Enter your transcription of the sample paragraph here.
If you are planning on using editorial symbols, in which of the following instances do you think you will use typographical symbols? For each instance you chose above, describe which typographical symbol you will use.
