Faculty Grant Projects for 2003-2004
2003-2004 was the third year of STG's faculty grants program.
John Bodel, Classics:
Prof. Bodel has been the director of the US Epigraphy Project since 1995. When he came to Brown in January 2003, the project came with him. The project's goal is to create an XML publication of Greek, Roman and Etruscan epigraphic texts in American collections consisting of image, text and metadata information for each inscription. He has been instrumental in the development of the Epidoc DTD for encoding inscriptions. The project's current website is at http://usepigraphy.rutgers.edu/.
STG's role in the current phase of the project will be to provide technical advice and assistance in developing an XML/TEI template in accordance with Epidoc guidelines, to collaborate on the redesign of the index of 2,300 published inscriptions mounted at the project website and to develop some basic pedagogical tools to exploit the instructional potential of the photographic archive (e.g., to illustrate styles of writing, ligatures, stonecutters' marks, erased, corrected, or supplemented text, etc.).
Enric Bou, Hispanic Studies
Prof. Bou has been working on a database of Catalan literature of the 19th and 20th centuries for several years. The online component was first developed for him by STG in 1998 using technology that has since become outdated. He has been working with colleagues in Spain and the US to continue to add to the database. In this phase he would like focus on improving the keywording, data entry capabilities and tools for managing the bibliography.
STG has already updated the database so that it uses more standard web database technology (PHP and MySQL). STG's role in this project will be to revise the current database to bring it into line with improvements that Prof. Bou has identified. We will also provide the ability to export search results in standard bibliographic formats (MARC, TEI header and Dublin Core). Finally, we will modify the database and web interface so that it can easily be incorported into other projects.
Lynn Davidman, Judaic Studies
Prof. Davidman's new book project will be based on 4,000 hours of interviews. She would like to identify and learn how to use one of the quantitative analysis packages that are used by social scientists, like Nudist or Atlas.ti. She has certain criteria that she would like the software to fulfill, and wants to make sure that the package she selects meets her needs. She would also like to experiment with voice recognition as a way to facilitate transcription.
STG's role in this project is to survey various quantitative analysis packages, and then help Prof. Davidman learn to use it for her research. We will also determine whether it will be easier and less expensive than other methods.
Thalia Field, Creative Writing:
Prof. Field has written a graphic poem, which is navigated spatially by reading phrases placed along a grid on a page. The poem contains 80 such pages. She would like to develop a multimedia version, which could run in a web page, a kiosk and, ultimately, be turned into an installation.
STG's role is to digitize the poem, and develop an interactive version of it, making sure that the infrastructure is such that it can easily be translated into different digital formats. We would use Flash, with a database to manage and serve the text and graphic segments, and to store position information. Prof. Field will also be working with a graduate student in Multimedia/Music on graphic design.
Michael Satlow, Judaic Studies
Prof. Satlow has been working with an group of faculty in other universities to build an online database of inscriptions from Israel/Palestine. The inscriptions are in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and are marked up in XML using a DTD that is similar to Epidoc. Unicode will be necessary for the encoding and display of these inscriptions. The inscriptions will be published on the web.
STG has already provided DTD analysis and consulting on data entry tools (XML and Unicode editors), and is currently engaged in implementing a database to keep track of secondary bibliography. In this project, STG will focus primarily on the encoding and delivery system but will continue to consult on the bibliography and data entry tools.
Peter Scharf, Classics
Prof. Scharf has been developing online Sanskrit materials for a number of years. Recently he has developed some texts for beginning courses that form the core of a Sanskrit digital library. The implementation of the encoded text and its accompanying instructional material is being done by Prof. Scharf and his colleague, Malcolm Hyman.
STG will work with Prof. Scharf to create an interface to the texts and their supporting material material, and also to develop additional materials that illustrate features of the Deva Nagari alphabet and basic grammatical forms.
Jane Sokolowsky, German Studies
Prof. Sokolowsky will use the Felix project (language leaching module management) that we developed for French last year with her introductory German TAs. She faces challenges similar to those of the French Department: there are many TAs who need access to a relatively standard set of materials. She currently makes a CD with instructional materials and distributes it to her teaching assistants. Felix will provide a more flexible way to do this, and can also incorporate the TAs' additions and improvements for use in subsequent years.
STG will modify the current software to to handle more than one language as easy as possible. We will learn how well the language-learning keywords that were selected for French apply to another language. This will also provide an opportunity to improve the general interface.
Susan Smulyan, James Campbell, American Civilization, Africana Studies
Over the last year, Prof. Smulyan and colleagues at Brown and Tougaloo created a website based on material from the Tougaloo archives documenting the Civil Rights movement. STG implemented the website and the underlying database. This portion of the project is complete. In the process of researching the Tougaloo archives, however, the project team discovered a great deal of information on the relationship between Brown and Tougaloo. They would like to create a second component of the Freedom Now! website to include this material.
STG's role in this project is to modify the website and its underlying database to incorporate these materials. The first phase will work with selected materials, but we will be working with the Library's Digital Projects group so that a later phase can include any additional materials.