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Gary Stringer

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expanding DigitalDonne
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Dear All,
  As we prepare to apply for renewed NEH support for the Variorum, we're trying to decide how we ought to expand our DigitalDonne site (http://digitaldonne.tamu.edu), and I'd like your advice.  We now have presentations of the 1633 and 1635 editions of the Poems, which include digital images and facing-page transcriptions that can be concorded on line.  The St. Paul's ms. will be similarly available within a few weeks, and the 1669 Poems should be operable before the first of the year.  T. R. O'Flahertie's copy of the 1654 prose letters has also been digitized and will be put up next spring.
  We have been thinking of trying to obtain scans of some other mss.--the Westmoreland and the O'Flahertie, among others--if funds and permissions can be acquired; and--unless I can think of a real drawback to so doing-- we'll also be putting up our transcriptions of poem files for people to download and use in their scholarship.  Transcriptions for a few poems are already available on the DV site, and our collation program can also be downloaded for free at that address (http://donnevariorum.tamu.edu).  Various other items--such as first-line indexes of manuscripts and the early prints--are also available there.
  It is probably a good idea to combine the DV and DigitalDonne sites into one so as to have everything together at one address--or at least to move some of the DV site material onto the more public DigitalDonne.  We'll probably undertake that combination as soon as we figure out what to do and have the time and available labor.
  What we've compiled so far has mostly been in response to needs and practices of the Variorum and to TAMU's library holdings, and these specific focii may be preventing us from imagining other possibilities: the work of many Donne scholars is not so firmly based in the material text and artifacts.  If anyone imagines kinds of material that we haven't thought of, we'd like to know what they are, too.
  So, we'd like to know whether anyone is using the site--we don't have an online counter that tallies hits--and any ways you can think of that would make it more useful. Anyone wishing to contribute may either respond on this message board or, if you prefer, email me at

                                           gary.stringer@tamu.edu
  Thanks for your help.

    Gary Stringer

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Greg Kneidel

Date:
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Hi Gary,

I've only used Digital Donne in the classroom to show my students the comma/semicolon problem in the last line of "Death be not proud" (we read Margaret Edson's W;t).  (I also bring in a copy of the Donne Variorum edition of the Holy Sonnets to give them a sense of the kind of, ummm, meticulous textual scholarship someone like Vivian Bearing would have been produced.)  No terribly creative, but students like seeing the images.  Seeing some manuscripts would be nice too.

As for research, I think the concordance function is great--much better that Combs and Sullens since one can link directly to the text of the poem.

My two cents.  I would also be interested to hear what other people are doing with either site.

Best,
Greg

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Jesús CORA ALONSO

Date:
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Dear all,

I think that reproducing the books that once belonged to Donne's library would also be a great idea. Many of them are signed by Donne himself or bear his motto, and I am sure that most must also have underlined sections and even marginal annotations in Donne's hand. This may give us an idea of how he read these works, how he worked, how he thought, how he borrowed ideas and even drew inspiration from his readings. This section in Digital Donne could be named The Digital Library of John Donne.
The drawback, of course, is that digitising all those works and getting permission for displaying all these materials on the Digital Donne site will certainly take a lot of energy and money.

All the best.

J. Cora.

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