Kansas State University Libraries New Prairie Press Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Planning and Digitizing Yesterday to Preserve It Management for Tomorrow (2016) The James Merrill Digital Archive: Channeling the Collaborative Spirit(s) Shannon Davis Washington University in St Louis, [email protected] Joel Minor Washington University in St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/cpndam Part of the Archival Science Commons, Cataloging and Metadata Commons, Computer and Systems Architecture Commons, Data Storage Systems Commons, Digital Communications and Networking Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Management Information Systems Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Technology and Innovation Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Davis, Shannon and Minor, Joel (2016). "The James Merrill Digital Archive: Channeling the Collaborative Spirit(s)," Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Management. https://newprairiepress.org/cpndam/ 2016/day1/7 This Presentation is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences at New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Central Plains Network for Digital Asset Management by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The James Merrill Digital Archive: Channeling the collaborative spirit(s) Shannon Davis, Digital Library Services Manager Joel Minor, Curator of Modern Literature Collection/Manuscripts Washington University in St. Louis James Merrill – the poet James Merrill Papers The Ouija Board and “The Book of Ephraim” Collaboration: faculty, students & staff Faculty Students Staff Digitize transcripts, drafts, Organize and provide access Initial direction for project and other materials (1700+ to paper materials pages) Train students on scanning, transcription, and encoding Help set priorities OCR and transcription Create TEI XML document models Set up comparison of drafts Recruit undergraduate/ Oversee creation of Omeka using Juxta collation graduate students digital exhibit – design, software custom coding, configuration of plug-ins Students: images + metadata Staff: Omeka exhibit THE BOOK OF EPHRAIM Merrill’s first epic poem, part of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Divine Comedies Chronicles the Ouija sessions of Merrill and his partner conversing with the spirit, Ephraim OUIJA TRANSCRIPTS Merrill transcribed each Ouija session by hand, then typed the transcripts up later for use in his poetry The James Merrill Papers hold over 500 leaves of transcripts, all available in the JMDA MERRILL IN PROCESS Notes, manuscripts and typescripts documenting the development of each section of the poem THE MERRILL ARCHIVE Merrill’s first epic poem, part of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Divine Comedies Chronicles the Ouija sessions of Merrill and his partner conversing with the spirit, Ephraim OUIJA TRANSCRIPTS Merrill transcribed each Ouija session by hand, then typed the transcripts up later for use in his poetry The James Merrill Papers hold over 500 leaves of transcripts, all available in the JMDA MERRILL IN PROCESS Notes, manuscripts and typescripts documenting the development of each section of the poem Staff: Omeka exhibit Students & Staff: encoding + guidelines Students & Staff: encoding Faculty, staff, and students: next steps Encoding, encoding, encoding Complete sections J-Z Revise sections A-I with more complex markup Questions? ssdavis @ wustl.edu joelminor @ wustl.edu .