Digital Gateway

Announcement: "The St. Louis Freedom Suits / Legal Encoding Project" public

In the fall of 2009, the Washington University Libraries, in partnership with the Missouri History Museum, was awarded a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for a multi-faceted project with two primary goals: 1) the development of a set of extensions to the TEI to encode historical legal documents, and 2) the transcription, encoding in TEI and the legal extensions of all the cases from the St. Louis Circuit Court Historic Records Project.

While the site for the new, IMLS-funded project site has been up and accessible for several months, we are pleased to "officially" announce the site today, which includes full transcriptions of 480 civil cases, 22 city directories, over 1000 African-American "freedom bonds," and other features and content.

For the Washington University Libraries, the date does not mark the end of work on the project. We continue to add content and functionality, and especially to promote the extensions to the TEI for encoding historical legal documents for other projects.

It does mark a time for us to thank the many contributors, advisors and friends of the project, as well as colleagues who have come and gone over the course of the project.

I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore....

As our work on the St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project progresses, we continually seek out places to showcase our efforts and gain support for the TEI extensions created for the encoding of legal documents.  In furtherance of that goal, Aris Woodham and Hyla Bondareff of the WU Law Library and I presented at the Mid-America and Southwestern Associations of Law Libraries (MAALL/SWALL) Joint Annual Meeting in Lawrence, Kansas last week.

The program offerings at MAALL/SWALL were wide-ranging and informative, and although geared toward law libraries were quite useful for those of us (well, me, really) working in digital libraries.  Some highlights were a great presentation on HTML5 by Timothy Wilson of St. Mary’s University Law Library, and another on the Campus Copyright Support Team recently created at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.  Meeting attendees were also treated to a keynote address by Stephen Ramsay, an English professor from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who specializes in computational text analysis and visualization.  Yep, that’s right: in an attempt to show off our grant project to the legal library community - as opposed to keeping it to ourselves in the digital humanities/library world - the keynote speaker at the law libraries meeting was a digital humanities guy!  I guess we really are taking over the world...

On the final day of the meeting, we delivered our presentation to a group of about 30 law librarians.  Hyla gave some historical background on the Freedom Suits, Aris talked about the schema design process, and then I walked us through the TEI extensions and showed off an early iteration of the project website (Thanks, Shannon!).  The response to the presentation was overwhelmingly positive.  We took questions on the freedom suits themselves and the grant project workflow, and even had a lively conversation about our new favorite presentation software, Prezi.  (Check out our prezi here.)  Perhaps most important, however, were the conversations held after the presentation.  Several people expressed interest in the TEI extensions for their own projects or had recommendations of people to contact who have legal encoding projects elsewhere.  We will be sure to follow up with them in the very near future as we continue the mission to garner support for our newly-created standard.

 

Milwaukee's Best: CALI Conference for Law School Computing Part 2

I just returned from the CALI Conference at the brand spankin' new and utterly amazing Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, WI.  If I learned nothing else from the trip, at least now I can visualize what $85 million can do!

The 3-day conference had close to 300 attendees, each one eager to learn about what's hot in the world of legal education and technology.  There were 50 sessions offered on various topics, and our presentation on the St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project was scheduled during the first time slot on the first day of the conference.  No pressure. 

With 5 sessions running concurrently, we had a small but seemingly-interested crowd at our presentation.  Hyla gave us all a history lesson on the freedom suits and their national significance, and Aris led us through the early stages of our schema development.  I discussed the nitty gritty of the current state of our TEI extensions and showed a few examples.  There were several thoughtful questions from the audience, and I think we made great strides in promoting our work to a more technologically inclined legal community.

If you're interested, you can check out our (first ever) prezi or watch the presentation webcast. 

Milwaukee's Best: CALI Conference for Law School Computing

Yesterday I got word that our proposal to showcase the work being done on the St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project at this year's CALI conference has been accepted!  Hyla Bondaref and Aris Woodham from the Wash U Law Library and I will present on the project's progress.  We plan to focus on the TEI extensions we created to reflect legal functions, genres, and roles.  The conference will take place at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, WI, June 23-25.  Hopefully we will get some good feedback from the more technologically inclined legal community - I'll let you know!

Conference update: better late than never

In November 2010, Erika Cohn and I presented a poster at the Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science. The theme of the conference was 'Working with Digital Data: Collaborate, Curate, Analyze, Annotate.' Our poster presentation showcased Digital Library Services’ grant-funded project to remediate and expand the content and functionality of the St. Louis Circuit Court Records Projects, as well as develop a standard of encoding for digital legal documents.

Erika and I received a lot of positive feedback from presenters and participants at the conference. Many took an interest in the project and agreed that the legal extensions that are being developed as part of the grant would be welcome addition to the TEI. A portion of our poster is below.

The Novels of Fanny Lewald now online

The new collection The Novels of Fanny Lewald is now online. This project is a collaboration among Professor Lynne Tatlock, Brian Vetruba (Catalog Librarian/Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, and European Studies Librarian), Vanessa Van Ornam (graduate of Wash U with a PhD in Germanic Languages) and Washington University Libraries Digital Library Services. Fanny Lewald (1811-1889) was a popular and prolific writer of novels, novellas, short stories, travelogues, letters, political essays, and other works. This collection provides access to digitized page images from ten of Lewald's novels in their native German. The website also provides supplemental resources and additional information about the project.

WU Libraries offer XML training

Washington University Libraries XML Workshop

 

The Washington University Libraries are presenting free workshops on several aspects of XML on Monday through Thursday, November 30, December 1, 2, 3 each from 9-12 noon in Olin Library, Arc computer lab.  These sessions are open to anyone in the area.

The workshop is made up of four sessions on different XML standards and technologies.  Participants are free to choose any or all of the sessions of interest to them.   See below for descriptions of each workshop.  There are no prerequisites, however, those without experience in markup languages (such as HTML) who wish to take other sessions may find the introductory session helpful.  All sessions will be presented at an introductory level.

Register for each session separately using the links in the descriptions.  Seating is limited to 24 per session. Contact Charmaine Scott at 935-7277 or cgscott@wustl.edu for questions /concerns or registration assistance.

Monday, November 30
XML + oXygen:
            The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is not a language itself, but rather a meta-language used to create markup languages to suit whatever purpose you may have.  In this session you will learn the basic rules of XML and the philosophy behind it.  You will also be introduced to the basics of the popular XML editor, oXygen. Register http://evanced.info/washingtonu/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=319&rts=&disptype=&ret=eventcalendar.asp&pointer=inhouse&returnToSearch=&SignupType=inhouse&num=0&ad=&dt=mo&mo=11/1/2009&df=calendar&EventType=ALL&a.

Tuesday, December 1
EAD:
           Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is the encoding and structural standard for archival description and the creation of finding aids using XML.  This course will briefly review the structure of a finding aid, as well as introduce participants to EAD through lecture, demonstrations, and in-class exercises. Register http://evanced.info/washingtonu/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=320&rts=&disptype=&ret=eventcalendar.asp&pointer=inhouse&returnToSearch=&SignupType=inhouse&num=0&ad=&dt=mo&mo=12/1/2009&df=calendar&EventType=ALL&a.

 

Wednesday, December 2
XSL & XPath:
           Part of the philosophy of XML is the separation of presentation from content to facilitate output of the content in multiple styles and formats.  The technology used to do this is the eXtensible Style Language (XSL).  The XML Path Language (XPath) is a query language for selecting sections in an XML document, often used in XSL style sheets.  Participants will learn the basics of XSL syntax, and create stylesheets using XPath to transform and output data in a variety of formats.  Register http://evanced.info/washingtonu/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=321&rts=&disptype=&ret=eventcalendar.asp&pointer=&returnToSearch=&SignupType=&num=0&ad=&dt=mo&mo=12/1/2009&df=calendar&EventType=Arc+Workshop%2C+Mee.

 

Thursday, December 3
TEI + Roma:
           This session will introduce participants to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) — its purpose, parts, organizing scheme, etc. — as well as to Roma — a web-based tool for managing its complexity. Participants will use the TEI to mark up a sample text and will use Roma to validate it. Register http://evanced.info/washingtonu/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=322&rts=&disptype=&ret=eventcalendar.asp&pointer=&returnToSearch=&SignupType=&num=0&ad=&dt=mo&mo=12/1/2009&df=calendar&EventType=Arc+Workshop%2C+Mee.

Vincent van Gogh Letters

Here's a new collection from the Vincent van Gogh Museum which has 902 letters transcribed and annotated.

"The edition is based on fifteen years of research. For each of the 902 letters the site gives a transcription of the original Dutch or French, a translation into English, a full (zoomable)  facsimile, comprehensive annotation, and illustrations (about 2000 in all) of the works of art discussed in the letters and annotations." - Peter Boot, TEI List

 

Washington University Libraries receives IMLS National Leadership Grant

We are pleased to announce that the IMLS has awarded the Washington University Libraries a grant to transcribe and encode in XML historical freedom suits. From the press release on the IMLS site:

Award Amount: $376,426; Matching Amount: $386,396
Grant Category: Advancing Digital Resources

Project Title: "The St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project"
The Washington University Libraries, in partnership with the Missouri History Museum and other contributors within and outside Washington University, will digitize, transcribe, and encode the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project and supplementary materials. Additionally, they will develop extensions to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) for encoding legal documents to reflect legal function, genres, and roles, and employ these extensions in this collection. The resulting extensions and guidelines serve as the basis for a new standard for encoding legal documents, and will receive further development as part of the TEI. The cases in the St. Louis Circuit Court Historic Records Project, especially the suits enslaved persons brought against their tacit "owners," are important historical documents. The remediation and expansion of the collection will make these documents significantly more accessible to a wider range of audiences. Creating a full-text searchable collection of these documents and enhancing their use will provide new means of understanding the roles of slaves, lawyers, abolitionists, the state of Missouri, and others involved in these cases. The project will not only make these materials available for historical research but will also contribute to the development of new standards for the larger digital library community.

DLS & HDW participate in WWP TEI workshop

This past week, staff members from DLS and the HDW (Humanities Digital Workshop, part of Arts & Sciences Computing) participated in a three-day workshop on TEI at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The workshop was put on by the Brown University Women Writers Project and hosted by the UCSB English Department. This was the first instance of a series of workshops to be held by the WWP on advanced encoding issues, which was focused on TEI projects that deal with "contextual information."

Applicants ot the workshops were encouraged to apply as teams dealing with specific projects. The DLS-HDW group (Andrew Rouner, Tim Lepczyk and Shannon Showers from DLS; Perry Trolard and Steve Pentecost from the HDW) applied as a team around a project submitted to the IMLS last February, which is a proposal developed around the Dred Scott and St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records projects, which would involve the full transcription and encoding in TEI of all imaged materials, including the encoding of all person-, place- and organization-names in the collection, as well as the development of encoding recommendations for historical legal documents. Awards are expected to be announced "mid-September."

For our group, discussion was focused on how we can leverage changes in the P5 iteration of the TEI (which is aimed at developments in the "semantic web") to create "personographies" (and other "-ographies") to represent this ionformation within TEI, and facilitate exchange of this information with other standards, such as RDF-OWL files using ontologies such as CIDOC-CRM and SKOS. We made significant headway on these issues, thanks to Julia Flanders and Syd Bauman of the WWP. Should we be awarded the IMLS grant, this work will give us a running start; and if not, we still intend to pursue many of these enhancements on the materials we have already-encoded on this and other projects.