On July 25th, 2024 faculty, students, and staff from George Mason University and The University of Virginia gathered to create a new XML edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest as part of a one-day edit-a-thon for inclusion into the digital anthology platform, Literature in Context: An Open Anthology of Literature in English.
The edit-a-thon was organized and hosted by co-PIs on the Literature in Context project—Tonya Howe, an Instructional Designer and Technologist at George Mason University; John O’Brien, a Professor of Literature at The University of Virginia; and Christine Ruotolo, Director of Arts and Humanities at the University of Virginia Library.
Literature in Context is an open-access digital humanities project that offers a new way for teachers and students to access frequently-assigned texts in the public domain, funded at the federal level by the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities and at the state level by VIVA, Virginia’s academic library consortium—which is based here at George Mason University. The Wilde play was chosen in part because there is no current XML edition available on the web; in part because it is high on the list of all assigned readings catalogued by the Open Syllabus project’s database of college level syllabi; and in part because a rare first printing of the play is housed in the Albert and Shirley Small special collections at The University of Virginia. The physical book was photographed at UVA and provides the facsimile page images accompanying the reading text. After an overview of the project, markup standards, and edit-a-thon goals, participants were provided with text from a transcription of the play created when Christine Ruotolo scanned the first edition facsimile page images into OpenAI; over the course of the day, the entirety of the text was marked up in TEI-structured XML, using the Oxygen editing platform, calibrated against the 1899 edition’s page images, and compiled into a single text. Final touches, like adding geographical markers identified by edit-a-thon participants and proofreading, were added by Howe and O’Brien; the final digital edition is now available on the development server of Literature in Context. Alok Yadav, Associate Professor of English at George Mason University and incoming director of GMU’s Center for Humanities Research, participated in the event, as did GMU Arts and Humanities Team Lead Librarian Jen Fehsenfeld and Art and GMU Art History Librarian Stephanie Grimm, in addition to graduate students at both UVA and GMU.
As a grant project, Literature in Context grew out of teaching practices invested in access, critical making, and materiality—both Howe (a former professor of literature at Marymount University) and O’Brien were creating similar tools for students in their classes. Howe was interested in engaging students with the material book and using digital approaches to enhance research and close reading; O’Brien sought to provide all students with access to assigned texts. Literature in Context has evolved as a response to a number of challenges posed by the current textbook industry—in particular, the high cost of textbooks, only a fraction of which are typically used in a given term; the turn to proprietary rental platforms, which keep students from retaining content; the need to be agile and responsive to student needs and interests in our reading selections; and the predatory, often hidden, practices of data collection fomented by the trend toward “Inclusive Access” or automated billing textbook platforms. In particular, the high cost of textbooks often keeps students from purchasing recommended or required course materials, and many turn uncritically to the Internet for free and sometimes problematic editions. Further, Literature in Context offers teachers the opportunity to develop themed coursepacks, which can be located in a single accessible place and made available in both print and media-rich electronic forms. And finally, as a pedagogical project, Literature in Context creates pathways for students to read actively and even contribute to the database. A native Hypothesis layer enables social annotation, and working collaboratively with faculty, students can contribute to public knowledge and gain critical thinking skills by writing annotations, marking up plain text, sourcing facsimile page images, and more. The project was designed to be almost infinitely expandable; faculty interested in contributing new texts to the database are encouraged to collaborate.
In 2023, Ruotolo, O’Brien, and Howe received their second NEH ODH Digital Advancement grant, awarded to help build out database content into a true replacement for print anthologies serving the British and American survey course, and to develop a widget that would integrate the project with LMSs like Canvas. As of July 2024, the development site included over 230 works by 93 different authors, representing periods from the Medieval era to the early 20th century, and it is currently indexed in the MLA International Bibliography. Howe, O’Brien, and Ruotolo shared their project at the 2024 Convention of the Modern Language Association and at DH2024—they will also be presenting at the 2024 Open Education Conference.
The July 25th Edit-a-Thon was made possible through generous support by faculty and staff at the Shannon Library at The University of Virginia, the Fenwick Library at George Mason University, VIVA, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
September 03, 2024