Thursday, February 23, 2006
Kate Chopin bibliography; updates to Cable bibliography
A new Kate Chopin bibliography; updates to the George Washington Cable bibliography.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Updates to bibliographies; the slave narrative
In addition to minor updates to some bibliographies, a list of characteristics of the slave narrative was added as a link to the page on slave (or freedom) narratives.
Update on the two search engines
I've reverted to PicoSearch for most of the searching at the site because it is more thorough. Atomz consistently returned fewer results; for example, although the words "Sequoyah," "Nauvoo," and "Essex" appear on the 1820 Timeline page, Atomz couldn't find them unless I put them into a head tag. On the Wharton Society page, Atomz couldn't find "Watkins" or "Loomis" or "permission" on the FAQ page, unless they were entered into the head tags as a keyword.
So, to sum up:
Advantages:
Atomz:
cleaner results page
faster results
automatic weekly indexing
Also, Atomz will index long texts, like the novels at the Wharton Society site.
Picosearch:
more thorough.
Disadvantages:
Atomz:
less thorough in its indexing.
Picosearch:
no automatic indexing
a busier, more ad-filled, and less attractive results page
slower results
no indexing of long texts.
Picosearch also puts a more or less random date on the pages; for example, several pages have been updated since June 2005, and the site has been reindexed since then, but Picosearch still shows June 2005 as the page date.
Since the point of a search is to give complete results, it looks as though Picosearch wins this round. I've put Picosearch boxes on the Timeline pages but am sticking with Atomz for the places where long texts need to be searched: http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org/books/index.html
UPDATE (for those who care): The problem seems to be that Atomz has a hard time figuring out text that's in tables, and there doesn't seem to be a solution for that.
So, to sum up:
Advantages:
Atomz:
Also, Atomz will index long texts, like the novels at the Wharton Society site.
Picosearch:
Disadvantages:
Atomz:
Picosearch:
Picosearch also puts a more or less random date on the pages; for example, several pages have been updated since June 2005, and the site has been reindexed since then, but Picosearch still shows June 2005 as the page date.
Since the point of a search is to give complete results, it looks as though Picosearch wins this round. I've put Picosearch boxes on the Timeline pages but am sticking with Atomz for the places where long texts need to be searched: http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org/books/index.html
UPDATE (for those who care): The problem seems to be that Atomz has a hard time figuring out text that's in tables, and there doesn't seem to be a solution for that.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Onoto Watanna, Augusta Evans
Two new pages: Onoto Watanna and Augusta Evans in addition to minor site updates.
Among the information posted:
Watanna's Japanese Nightingale (picture) is in Mark Twain's library; the note at the site says that this is one of the last books that Livy (his wife) read.
Among the information posted:
Watanna's Japanese Nightingale (picture) is in Mark Twain's library; the note at the site says that this is one of the last books that Livy (his wife) read.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
New Story by Rebecca Harding Davis; Melville Marginalia
The Rebecca Harding Davis page has a new story available: "General William Wirt Colby" ; thanks to a reader of the site for pointing this out.
Also, a new link to the Melville Marginalia site has been added to the Melville page. Here's an excerpt from the article at the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscrption required):
Through his early fame and later obscurity, Melville was a passionate reader and annotator. In the absence of manuscript material, scholars have learned to look for compositional clues in the margins of his books — when they can find them. When he died in New York City in 1891, nobody tried to keep his library intact. "Melville's reputation was washed up," Mr. Olsen-Smith points out, "and it would not have occurred to anyone to preserve the evidence."
Scholars estimate that the writer owned about 1,000 books at the time of his death. Some went to friends and family; the rest were dispersed to secondhand booksellers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and from there made their way into public library collections and the hands of private collectors. The whereabouts of 285 titles have been tracked, which means that more than 700 could still be extant somewhere, waiting for scholars to find them.
Lost and Found
Melville's copy of Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale is hardly a new find. It surfaced in the 1930s, by which time someone already had erased Melville's check marks, underlinings, and scribbles. The volume has been in the possession of Harvard University's Houghton Library since 1960.
Its influence on the author of Moby-Dick has also long been recognized. Dennis C. Marnon is administrative officer of the Houghton Library and a Melville enthusiast who has assisted several scholars, including Mr. Olsen-Smith, in the hunt for Melville's missing library. The Beale, he says, "puts us pretty close to Melville composing Moby-Dick. He's reading it at the time, and some of the marginalia not only find their way into the actual text ... but all the passages that are incorporated freely or in a modified way ... are also marked in this copy."
Scholars had assumed those markings, once erased, were lost for good. "None of them realized that the marginalia was as recoverable as it is," Mr. Olsen-Smith says. "It's been quite common to write about Melville's use of Beale without consulting the book."
It was in 1998 that he realized that at least some of Melville's markings were recoverable. To make them out, he first tried a highly sophisticated technique: squinting. Once he realized he could in fact decipher some of the characters, he used a combination of techniques to recover what he could. He subjected the erasures to different degrees of light and shadow, read with a high-powered magnifying glass, took digital photos that he could enlarge on his laptop computer, and did word searches in the text of Moby-Dick to confirm guesses about what a word or phrase might be.
"The moments of lightning striking were very few," Mr. Olsen-Smith says. "Recovery took a long time. It was letter by letter, sometimes parts of letters." He has only recently completed the process. Not every mark could be deciphered, but he says he is confident that he has recovered all that it was possible to recover. . . .
Also, a new link to the Melville Marginalia site has been added to the Melville page. Here's an excerpt from the article at the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscrption required):
Through his early fame and later obscurity, Melville was a passionate reader and annotator. In the absence of manuscript material, scholars have learned to look for compositional clues in the margins of his books — when they can find them. When he died in New York City in 1891, nobody tried to keep his library intact. "Melville's reputation was washed up," Mr. Olsen-Smith points out, "and it would not have occurred to anyone to preserve the evidence."
Scholars estimate that the writer owned about 1,000 books at the time of his death. Some went to friends and family; the rest were dispersed to secondhand booksellers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and from there made their way into public library collections and the hands of private collectors. The whereabouts of 285 titles have been tracked, which means that more than 700 could still be extant somewhere, waiting for scholars to find them.
Lost and Found
Melville's copy of Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale is hardly a new find. It surfaced in the 1930s, by which time someone already had erased Melville's check marks, underlinings, and scribbles. The volume has been in the possession of Harvard University's Houghton Library since 1960.
Its influence on the author of Moby-Dick has also long been recognized. Dennis C. Marnon is administrative officer of the Houghton Library and a Melville enthusiast who has assisted several scholars, including Mr. Olsen-Smith, in the hunt for Melville's missing library. The Beale, he says, "puts us pretty close to Melville composing Moby-Dick. He's reading it at the time, and some of the marginalia not only find their way into the actual text ... but all the passages that are incorporated freely or in a modified way ... are also marked in this copy."
Scholars had assumed those markings, once erased, were lost for good. "None of them realized that the marginalia was as recoverable as it is," Mr. Olsen-Smith says. "It's been quite common to write about Melville's use of Beale without consulting the book."
It was in 1998 that he realized that at least some of Melville's markings were recoverable. To make them out, he first tried a highly sophisticated technique: squinting. Once he realized he could in fact decipher some of the characters, he used a combination of techniques to recover what he could. He subjected the erasures to different degrees of light and shadow, read with a high-powered magnifying glass, took digital photos that he could enlarge on his laptop computer, and did word searches in the text of Moby-Dick to confirm guesses about what a word or phrase might be.
"The moments of lightning striking were very few," Mr. Olsen-Smith says. "Recovery took a long time. It was letter by letter, sometimes parts of letters." He has only recently completed the process. Not every mark could be deciphered, but he says he is confident that he has recovered all that it was possible to recover. . . .
Saturday, February 11, 2006
New search engine
I am trying out a new search engine, atomz. It seems to return results more quickly than PicoSearch, but it returns fewer results. It has been installed on the Wharton Society and American literature pages. Both search features have ads, unfortunately, but that's the price for a free service. If anyone reading this wants to weigh in on which engine works better, please add a comment or email me at drcampbell6676 at yahoo dot com.
One reason for switching is that atomz will search long documents (such as the text of novels), and Picosearch will not.
One reason for switching is that atomz will search long documents (such as the text of novels), and Picosearch will not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)