abstracts posted

[ezimmer]

Have posted our initial and revised abstracts within the main directory as text files.

Given the comments of our reviewers, I'm thinking it might clarify our argument to go back to the initial, three-paragraph version, with no footnotes except a link or two.

Could I ask what the two of you think about that?

Thanks!

@ebeshero @mollyodonnell

[ebeshero]

@ezimmer First, I had trouble with the abstract files when I synced my repo--they came in as "corrupt" and Word wouldn't open them. I seem to remember having similar problems earlier back when we were e-mailing these. Fortunately, I was able to copy the text from GitHub's raw view into new files--so I think all is well now. I pushed fresh copies from here. Sync and make sure they open for you.

Here's what I think: I'm really not following the first paragraph of your initial proposal. I like paragraphs 2 and 3, but paragraph 1 is a real sticking point for me.

Here's what I'm missing: We spoke of triangulation as a strategy in mapping something unknown by locating it in relation to two other known points. Why not use that word? I would like to use it in the talk at any rate. When I explain our project to people, I tend to use that term. I don't know if we had it in an earlier draft, but I also don't think we should return to earlier drafts at this point. Changes should be new and fresh, and should be clearer than the original.

[ebeshero]

@ezimmer How about adding the phrase "predictive visualization tool"?

The second sentence in the initial abstract loses me--I know you explained some background on it once, so one could understand the "competing metaphors," but that background is missing here and we're not really talking about the art of writing scholarly annotations in this paper, are we? We're building a visualization tool that will help lead us to write better annotations. I'm not sure what part of Ricks is most aligned with what we're doing, but I imagine it's the "supererogation" part (which I like by the way). Can we cut the other stuff to concentrate on that, and imagine a bit how a predictive visualization tool will lead us to helpful supererogation?

This bit is pretty good, but could be better, I think: "how digital modeling of scholarly annotation may enhance recalibration and discovery, simultaneously advancing knowledge while prompting further research."

Are we doing a "digital modelling of scholarly annotation"? Are the triangles building a model of a note? "Recalibration" suggests we might use our tool to correct our existing prosopography entries, while "discovery" suggests developing new entries. All good, but it could be clearer what we're talking about--the construction of a prosopography resource that might be of use beyond our project--as a resource pointing to new information about 19th-century people, places and contexts that might be useful to others as something more than what we can read in the ODNB and other canonical biographical resources. Isn't that the leading edge aspect of our work here?

To be clear, I expect to use the tool we're building to help highlight new directions to take in the prosopography entries in the site index file at http://digitalmitford.org/si.xml . Does prosopography data development count as scholarly annotation? (Sure, I suppose it does.) In our files, editorial notes are reserved for commenting on specific issues to a particular document (like a gap in the manuscript), while site index entries contain a different kind of "note" made available to any file across the project that invokes an xml:id stored in the si file.