During the past 2 weeks, we learned how to use close reading for the deeper understanding of the Payne journal and how to use editorial tools, not only Juxta Editions, but also a new and magical tool, Oxygen to work on the transcription in XML files and also in a more detailed way. During this process, apart from how to use digital tools and how to collaborate with others, I learned how important self reflection is for an editor.
When I was working on my own pages, the 2 main challenges I met were how to decide whether I should mark up this word, not that one, and where to stop. The first challenge of how to decide directly led me ignore some particular word I should mark up. In this case, on my first time reading through my own pages, I finished quickly and let slip many words unconsciously. Gradually I realized this problem in my editorial process. Just as Elena Pierazzo mentioned in her article: “Scholarly choices constitute the base of any transcription and subsequent diplomatic edition”, what I did on my own pages now would finally appear in front of readers. Therefore, making scholarly choices seems to be extraordinarily important. For the second time reading, I put more emphasis on the trait description, the emotional changes of characters, the role names and the changes of the place location. My personal experience in making a choice explains why I feel quite interesting about Elena Pierazzo’s point: “the alterations which lead from the former to the latter are interpretative and irreversible.” As she explains, two scholars, given the same transcriptional criteria, are most likely not to produce the same transcription of the same exemplar, it’s crucial to treat any resource with the same respect and carefulness.
Then I met the second challenge: where to stop. What Elena Pierazzo pointed out this time is very helpful to me on deciding where to stop. She said that if there is an infinite set of facts to be observed within the physical object, ‘no limits’ might lead us to create a model which aspires to equal the object to be studied. But a model must be simpler than the object it models, otherwise it will be unusable for any practical purpose. As we learned that the diplomatic edition is more similar to a model, everything we put in this model should be concise and meaningful enough to make the context accessible to every reader. In this case, I learned that the work I mark up in the XML file should be related to the journal itself. It does matter how the word is related to the Moravian, the historical background or a particular place name. My job, as the editior, is to find out the relationship between the words I mark up.
Last but not least, I want to mention my design for my web page. As we can see, I chose the white background since it’s easy for reading. Since readers are more likely to be scholars and students who are working on their papers on Moravian, I highlight the place and the role names by changing their color to red and blue.
It seems that when we first worked on this, we both met the problem that to decide which word to be tagged. I agree with your opinion that we should tag things that is related to the author’s journey, his purpose. Therefore, when I was tagging people, instead of tagging all the people, I selected people that have influences on authors, such as the Justice, but not unimportant people, such as those who guessed their purpose of the author and had no further interaction with the author. But when I was tagging places, I chose to tag all of them since they all indicate the author’s route.