Women Writers Online

Newly redesigned Women Writers Online, beta launch at

http://tinyURL.com/wwonew

This early beta version is the first step in redeveloping the WWO interface and moving WWO onto a platform of modern XML publishing tools.

We welcome bug reports; a list of the major ones we know about is here:

http://www.wwp.brown.edu/wwo/help/known_bugs.html

Feedback form is here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/wwo_feedback

NEW features aimed at improving the value of WWO for teaching and research (to be rolled out gradually over the coming months)

--faceted browsing, narrow searches by genre, date, and other metadata

--reader control over the display of the reading text

--simpler, more direct interface for searching and manipulating the collection

--basic biographical details for many authors

--new tools for exploration, such as maps, timelines, and visualizations

Other important changes planned for 2012-13:

--all of the contextual and biographical essays currently included in Renaissance Women Online will be freely available, rather than being part of WWO's licensed content, and we will be recruiting additional essays to expand this collection beyond the Renaissance.

--contemporary reviews and reception materials from our current grant project on readership and reception will be linked from the texts they comment on.

Both the old and new interfaces will remain available during the month of March; the old WWO will be retired permanently in early April.

Women Writers Online: New platform

The Women Writers Project, Brown University is due to launch a new Women Writers Online (WWO) platform and interface. The launch will take place in stages over the next few months. In March the new interface to WWO will be publicly visible in parallel with the existing interface. In April, the new interface will become the WWO interface, and access to the old interface will be cut off.

The new platform will retain and improve on familiar features:

•  full-text searching
• searching on bibliographic data
• clear reading interface

New features to be added:

• faceted browsing (narrow searches by genre, date, etc.)
• detailed control over the display of the text (e.g. modernization of typography)
• simpler interface for searching and manipulating the collection
• basic biographical details for many authors
• new tools for exploration, e.g., timelines, visualizations

Also, over the course of the coming year:

• expand and update the collection of contextual and biographical essays included in Renaissance Women Online, and extend this collection beyond the Renaissance;
• add contemporary reviews and reception materials arising from our current grant project on readership and reception.

Ireland's "Gothic Past": new TCD website

Recently launched: Gothic Past is an open-access resource for the study of medieval Irish architecture and sculpture. 

The site showcases images from three significant collections of image archives, housed in the Department of History of Art and Architecture in College: the [Roger] Stalley Collection; the [Edwin C.] Rae Collection of medieval Irish architecture and sculpture: photographic images that were created and collected from the 1930s to the present day; and the [Danielle] O’Donovan collection of Irish Gothic moulding profiles. 

These image collections have been a key primary resource for a thematic research project, Reconstructions of the Gothic Past, funded by IRCHSS and carried out in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College from 2008 -2011. 

The Reconstructions of the Gothic Past project has examined Gothic buildings in Ireland as part of a continuous historical process, analysing them not just as monuments of one particular period, but as historical ‘documents’. Examining change through time reveals how the use and treatment of Gothic buildings was affected by social, economic, religious and cultural change in subsequent ages. The project monograph will be published in 2012 by Wordwell Books.

Reconstructions of the Gothic Past Project team: Roger Stalley, Prinicipal Investigator, Rachel Moss, Associate Investigator, Caroline Martha McGee, Research Assistant, Niamh NicGhabhann, Doctoral Fellow, Olivia Horsfall Turner, Research Associate, Danielle O’Donovan, Research Associate,

Gothic Past Website team:

·         Roger Stalley, Reconstructions of the Gothic Past Project

·         Caroline Martha McGee, Reconstructions of the Gothic Past Project

·         Danielle O'Donovan, Reconstructions of the Gothic Past Project

·         Niamh Brennan, Research and Information Systems and Services, Trinity College Library

·         Garret McMahon, Research and Information Systems and Services, Trinity College Library

·         Deirdre O'Regan, Web Developer

·         Enovation Solutions Ltd (Site hosting and support)

·         Peter Gillis, OneHouse Communications