hklk_jk
#The Letters of Harold and Lenore Karlin
This repository represents the ITP independent study digital edition of the letters of Harold and Lenore Karlin using Jekyll and Github.
##Narrative:##
In 1945, letters mattered more. When transportation was slower and more expensive, and telecommunications were less reliable, human correspondence relied on postage and matter moving across time and space. Add to these general concerns the pressures of war, the translocating force of armed troops. Levels of language and time unfold in the daily letters written between a Jewish couple at the outset of their marriage, 26 year old Lenore Karlin, Women’s Army Corps (WAC) volunteer and new mother, and 27 year old Harold Karlin, an army doctor stationed in Germany. What is the best way to present this archive? What stories of war, systems of language, and concerns of culture exist in the months they wrote? By creating a way to distribute these contents that simulates the materiality and temporality of this exchange, I present a wartime experience of correspondence.
In Lives in Letters, I propose to create a basis for a digital edition of the letters of Lenore and Harold Karlin. The project will build parameters of the archive to establish a fluidly readable text. The initial version will involve five to ten letters that can be read online via desktop or tablet. The contents and pages will be made open access with code available on Github and content available through CUNY Academic Works. Ideally, the edition will prove a resource for readers curious about the content, to scholars invested in the epistolary mode of communication, and to editors wishing to develop their own digital editions. Ultimately, I would like to use this initial start-up phase to develop a model for digital letter editions that could expand to make a platform for individual users to upload and curate their own personal letter collections. The grant would facilitate the construction of a minimum viable prototype, as well as the investigation of current models and consultation with other letter collectors. I would use this project to scaffold a Create, Read, Update and Delete application intended to lower publication barriers to those wishing to digitize and curate personal letters.
##Environmental Scan:##
Lives in Letters hopes to join and strengthen the ecosystem of digital letter editions currently available. Ultimately, I wish to address the need for easy intake of new collections that would act along the lines of Ancestry.com -- a tool for amateur collectors and family historians to curate, house, and read their collected letters. To understand where this platform would fit in, it is important to address current examples that meet certain needs. Patrick Sahle’s Digitale Edition index of digital letter editions shows the breadth of possibilities. These collections center around various periods (like Berlin in 1800) and intellectual celebrities (Mark Twain, Christina Rossetti). I wish to build on a number of the examples in order to prototype a new publication platform that would expand the field to provide a means of presenting personal correspondence. Through the grant, I would have the opportunity to connect with developers of these projects to meet community metadata standards, but also to determine gaps in available resources.
###Below I outline features of projects that may prove helpful in the development of my initial collection from which I will design my future project.
As a platform for making materials available for public transcription of historic documents, the Virginia Memory project, created in Omeka, offers a useful model for making objects accessible for users to contribute to the archive. The primary utility seems to be in making the process of digital translation of collective historical artifacts available and visible. The John Adams Electronic archive, maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Society, meets the historical needs of preserving the materials, but it does not lend itself to a fluid reading experience. The needs of the archivist surpass the casual reader. The Carlyle Letters Online, developed by Duke University Press, makes the holdings available and the complexity of the digital project visible. The transparency and detail of the documentation is a shining example; it outlines best usage, citation, permissions, and limitations presented by the materials. The project masterfully achieves its purpose of “Victorian Cultural Reference.” My project hopes to treat collections less comprehensively, more reader focused. The Letters of Matthew Arnold digital edition, and Dolley Madison Digital Edition, both developed through Mellon funding at the University of Virginia, demonstrate a clear simplicity but require login to access the materials. The Digital Mozart collection exists as a component of a greater project with substantial funding. The Willa Cather Complete Letters at University of Nebraska Lincoln tantalizingly awaits her manumission into public domain. Publication in 2018 will surely explore advances possible in digital editions. The overall edition of her writings demonstrate the simplicity and dedication to legibility to which my project aspires. The Princeton based Einstein papers, appear as contained digital facsimiles of the original materials. The attention to the physical appearance of the documents interrupts the transmission of the communications at times. I hope to find a way to store the physical details of these objects while still foregrounding the fluency of reading the correspondence they contain. The University of Canterbury Christchurch, NZ, collection pursues a similar goal to my collection, however, the number of clicks it takes to unearth the transcription interferes with the immediate reading. These letters are physical objects first, literary texts second.