Discussion: Comparing Emily Dickinson XML Projects

[ebeshero]

The short poems of Emily Dickinson have generated lots of excitement and serious digital humanities projects in our time. Web technology lets more people than ever before view "photo facsimiles" of the tiny scraps of paper on which she wrote, and text encoding has transformed and remixed and circulated the poems to give them a digital rebirth. Let's review and discuss some of these projects to see what text encoding can do with the way we read a poet. This should also get you used to writing in markdown on GitHub Issues!

Browse the following projects and choose two to discuss together in your post. You'll need to be patient and "dig around" some of these sites to get to the poems. I'll provide a little guidance to get you in to each one:

1. Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886

   • Skim around the introductions to get a sense of what this site is archiving.
   • Then wander about in the Browse documents: dig into a collection and select some poems: look at each reading view and look at the XML code.

2. Emily Dickinson Project (fascicles 16 and 6) (made/remade by my students from 2015/16!) :-)

   • Try interacting with some specific poems posted on this site, such as Poem 1605, and look at the Dash Reduction Analysis. What can you learn about how Dickinson a) wrote variations on her own wording, and b) how publications of her poems altered her work? How are you able to learn about this?

3. Emily Dickinson Archive: An open-access website for the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson

   • There are three ways to explore this site from the front page: either by Searching the text of the poems for a word or phrase, by browsing by library collection, or by Lexicon: looking up words and definitions pulled from Dickinson's poems. Try exploring some of each.
   • For the Search box, try plugging in some words that jump out at you from the Lexicon. Suggestion: try the word "bee" or the word "fly"
   • If you look up the word "funeral" you'll see how this site archives versions of Poem 1605 represented in the Emily Dickinson student project.

In your posts, comment on how any two of these sites compare with each other for a) how you interact with Dickinson's poems: how are they represented and what is the reading experience like? b) what you can see of the text encoding: How easily can you find the markup, and what kinds of things can you see in the markup? How does the markup compare between the two projects you're looking at?

This is a discussion! Since each of you is responding here, you can reply to each other, help each other out (it's tricky to to get a view of the code in the Emily Dickinson Archive but it is there!), and also feature examples. Please feature some markdown code blockss in your posts! (You may also include some screen captures to comment the website navigation, but please use code blocks if you're talking about code!)

<feature>
         <example type="codeBlock">XML code block</example>
</feature>

[jvs7215]

Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886 is true to its name. The site captures and documents a large variety of her scattered writings, from poems to letters, that fit within a certain criteria. The site also aims to link “trace fragments” of her writings with associated texts. Each poem on the site is well documented and has the following categories: Physical Description, Collection, Transmission History, Publication History, Commentary, and Tags. Additionally, the user can easily click between a reading of the poem, the facsimile, a transcription, or an "encoding" tab that lets you view or download the xml file. By viewing the xml for A 93-7: etext transcription, we can see how the poem is organized.

<ab type="stanza">
"Remember me"
<lb/>
implored the Thief!
<lb/>
<seg type="trace" corresp="a314.trace.1" xml:id="a93-7.trace.1">
Oh Hospitality!
<lb/>
My Guest "Today
<lb/>
in Paradise"
<lb/>
</seg>
I give thee
<lb/>
guaranty.
<lb/>
</ab>

The second site I looked at was the student made Emily Dickinson Project (fascicles 16 and 6). This site takes a different approach and records 2 her fascicles, or poems that were bundled and clustered together. Per @ebeshero 's suggestion, I took a look at Poem 1605. This site documents her work quite differently. The reading and the original copy can be view side-by-side for comparison. Different stanzas are segmented by grey blocks, with the each line marked. This particular poem has several different iterations (Facile 16, 1896 Poems, ...) that you can toggle in between to see the changes, as well as viewing the original xml file. Because you can toggle between all the different versions of the poem, the xml for the site seems a lot longer and more complex than the previous one. The lines are also number in the code with attribute tags:

<l n="1">
I felt a
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16 #fh">Funeral</rdg>
<rdg wit="#ce #poems3">funeral</rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16 #fh">,</rdg>
<rdg wit="#ce #poems3"/>
</app>
in my
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16 #fh">Brain</rdg>
<rdg wit="#ce #poems3">brain</rdg>
</app>
,
</l>

Even by viewing a small segmennt of the code, one can get a good idea of how a site user toggles between the different versions.

[EvLar64]

With the Emily Dickinson Archive, you can digitally interact with her work fairly easily. You're given a central view of a facsimile of the poem (the site's primary representation of the poems), which can be scaled and maneuvered as needed. In addition, the version of the poem can be changed at any moment. The reading experience is good (especially with the tag-searching ability to find other poems), but given that the facsimiles are in the middle, I'm usually looking off to the side tab.

In this site's xml, poems are measured by lines, line groups, and stanzas. However, other things are tracked as well, including quotation marks written in by Dickinson herself (seen with "&quot" tags), and Dickinson's practice of using a smaller, truncated line to conclude a line group (marked as "divisions").

<lg type="stanza">
                    <l>To ponder little workmanships</l>
                    <l>In Crayon - or in wool - </l>
                    <l>With &quot;This was last Her<app type="division"><lem><lb/></lem></app> fingers did&quot; - </l>
                    <l>Industrious until - </l>
                </lg> 

The Radical Scatters site also features smooth digital interaction with Dickinson's poems. You're able to quickly tab through different views of the poems (reading, facsimile, transcribed, code), and also flip into the poem's various historical information off to the side. This site does miss the feature of searching specific words/phrases and linking them to other similarly-tagged poems, but because of the more straightforward ability to select different views of the poems, I prefer this site to the first one mentioned.

This site's xml tracks the poems a little differently, where instead of groups/stanzas, it instead measures with segments and line-breaks. This xml also seems to be a lot more concerned with accurately describing the physical traits of the poem in question (as in the case of this particular poem, it's explicitly stating in the code where the text is located on the page, how it's oriented, where surrounding text is, etc.).

<div2 type="poem" xml:id="a514.txt.1" rend="rough-copy draft, with alternatives">
      <!--  hand="rough" ink="pencil" -->

place="composed_in_the_right_hand_sector_of_the_envelope_separated_from_the_body_of_the_text_by_a_vertical_line"
               type="variant">+ were <lb/>listening <lb/>to the<lb/>
               <milestone unit="absent" type="horizontal_line"/>
            </add>
         </seg>
         <seg corresp="a514.3" xml:id="a514.4">
            <add
            place="composed_in_the_right_hand_sector_of_the_envelope_separated_from_the_body_of_the_text_by_a_vertical_line"
               type="variant">+Foundering <lb/>Faces<lb/>
            </add>
            <milestone unit="absent" type="horizontal_line"/>
         </seg>
         <seg corresp="a514.5" xml:id="a514.6">
            <add

[sjm7342]

The first source I looked through was the Radical Scatters site. Upon opening the link, one is greeted with a summarization of the selected texts and how they are displayed on the site.

When browsing through the catalogue, one can view the selected texts and see they are organized through the original file location, the current location, the composition date, the media type, and the type of paper used. I randomly clicked on one from Harvard's Houghton Library.

The poem itself is easy to read on the site. One also has the choice of reading it, viewing the facsimile, the transcription, and the encoded version, seen below.

The second site I looked through was the Emily Dickinson Project. The site is very finely done and easy to access. One is greeted with a summarization of the purpose of the project when first opening the site.

When viewing the Fascicle 16 link, the poem is broken down in a simple way that is easy to follow and understand.

The different variations of how the poem was originally written and the subsequent changes is easy to navigate and understand depending on what the reader wants to know. It is possible to view only the Fascicle 16 version, as well as only the 1896 Poem, Centenary Edition, and the Final Harvest. It is also easy to access the original XML version.

The Dash Reduction Analysis is also easy to read, and easy to access through the Analysis, Dash Usage, Network Analysis, and Conclusion tabs.

It is easy to see Emily Dickinson's poems on the site as well and how differently the poems are organized.

[sam-seb]

The first source I took a peek at was the Radical Scatters site. The site was easy enough to navigate, and there seems to be lots of information here.

I was a big fan of this site. There's numerous different ways to view the poem. There's also several tabs on the left with additional information on the poem.

` Affluence

of time

Ecstasy of time But that suspended arrested ` The XML here put a bit more emphasis on the physical attributes of the document, taking note of how things were written and physically marked up on the paper. I also took a look at the Emily Dickinson Project site.   This site seems to be more focused on transcribing the poems as opposed to the markup thats on the physical paper. There's options on the left that reveal different variations of the poems, which is super neat to see! They're also color-coded accordingly, which is a small thing, but super helpful.

[brother-bread]

The first site is the better of the two in my opinion in terms of navigation and ease of use, and more aesthetically pleasing and easy on the eyes. It uses a soft brown and yellow color scheme that sort of fits that old paper look. The site has a lot of selections available for how to view the poem and other important information including tags, publication history and more. Having options like this even while not necessary add a lot to a website for those who want to dig deeper into information outside of this website.

<div2 type="poem" xml:id="a462.txt.1" rend="rough-copy draft, with alternatives">
<!--  hand="rough" ink="pencil"   -->
<ab type="line_s_verse">
There is
<seg type="trace" corresp="a463.trace.1" xml:id="a462.trace.1">
no Frigate
<lb/>
like
</seg>
a Book
<lb/>
To take
<app>
<rdg corresp="a462.one" xml:id="a462.us">us</rdg>
<rdg corresp="a462.us" xml:id="a462.one">
<add rend="smaller hand" place="infralinear" type="variant"> one </add>
</rdg>
</app>

The code here is separated very frequently with occasional attributes and elements in chunks. The code also describes the way that the poem was written, either with pencil or if the author wrote it differently.

---

The third website uses very bright white colors, but does offer a newer looking menu albeit similar in terms of usage. This website also allows for toggling of highlighting for different publishings and transcriptions of the poem (unless I am understanding this wrong).

<body>
<head>
<title>Poem 8 (J 242: 1861/1945)</title>
</head>
<lg>
<l n="1">
When we stand on tops of
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16">Things</rdg>
<rdg wit="#bm">things</rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16">—</rdg>
<rdg wit="#bm"/>
</app>
</l>
<l n="2">
And like the
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16">Trees</rdg>
<rdg wit="#bm">trees</rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16">,</rdg>
<rdg wit="#bm"/>
</app>
look down
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16">—</rdg>
<rdg wit="#bm">,</rdg>
</app>
</l>
<l n="3">
The smoke all cleared away from it
<app>
<rdg wit="#df16">—</rdg>
<rdg wit="#bm"/>
</app>
</l>

This website has more going on in the code but is still separated frequently with not much being on one line. This is likely due to make it easier to read in code form because of the inclusion of different transcriptions and publications of the poems.

[dal5842]

The first source I dove into was Emily Dickinson Project (fascicles 16 and 6). This source was really easy to use and pleasing to the eyes other than the bright colors. I like that the typed poem, the broken down poem are side by side, and the hand written version are all side by side.

The second source I dove into was the Emily Dickinson Archive: An open-access website for the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson. This website was a little softer on the eyes with the browns and yellows but it was slightly more hard to use than the first source even though it was still easy to use. I like that you can just look up any word and it will bring up poems related to the word used. The fact that the typed version of the poem and the written version of the poem side by side.

`

The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Johnson, 1955

Emily Dickinson Archive

<text>
    <body>
        <div type="transcript" xml:id="J453">
            <lg type="stanza">
                <l>Love -- thou art high --</l>
                <l>I cannot climb thee --</l>
                <l>But, were it Two</l>
                <l>Who knows but we --</l>
                <l>Taking turns -- at the Chimborazo --</l>
                <l>Ducal -- at last -- stand up by thee --</l>
            </lg>
            <lg type="stanza">
                <l>Love -- thou art deep --</l>
                <l>I cannot cross thee --</l>
                <l>But, were there Two</l>
                <l>Instead of One --</l>
                <l>Rower, and Yacht -- some sovreign Summer --</l>
                <l>Who knows -- but we'd reach the Sun?</l>
            </lg>
            <lg type="stanza">
                <l>Love -- thou art Vailed --</l>
                <l>A few -- behold thee --</l>
                <l>Smile -- and alter -- and prattle -- and die --</l>
                <l>Bliss -- were an Oddity -- without thee --</l>
                <l>Nicknamed by God --</l>
                <l>Eternity --</l>
            </lg>

        </div>     
    </body>
</text>

`

[Matthew-W8]

The sites Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886 and Emily Dickinson Archive: An open-access website for the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson each take a different approach to archiving Dickinson's work.

[Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886] is about achiving Dickinson's works based on where they were written and where they are now. The image shows how they are organized on the front page.

However, the XML appears to be documenting the state of the document, as shown in the XML below: `

for Light would

certainly find it

and I think and believe I did so perchance I did - x possibly I did

` Intrestingly there are also various variables with correspondences listed in the code shown and through the rest of the document. I couldn't make sense of it, but I'm sure it has more internal meaning.

The second site (Emily Dickinson Archive: An open-access website for the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson) appears to be transcribing Dickinson's handwritten scripts into a readable translation with added bits. The image below shows the edits shown in the text (seen in brackets).

The website also contains a dictionary of sorts that showcases all kinds of meanings to words. The image below shows the various definitions of 'Friend', which still continues out of the bounds of the page.

While I couldn't find any place to access markup, but as the first image shows, there is still forms of markup just not in XML. The first site is defininetly easier to find the XML, but each site has a use depending on what the user would need.

[connorcarpenter13]

I picked the first and second websites, Radical Scatters and The Emily Dickinson Project, to compare to each other, and I think the first one is overall better. Navigating from poem to poem is a bit easier on Radical Scatters, but in terms of actually reading the poems in reading view, both websites are easy and simple enough. When looking at the xml files for both websites, that's what made me pick the the first website over the second. This first screenshot shows the xml file for a poem on Radical Scatters. I feel like if you're a beginner or more advanced at coding, the xml markup in this isn't too difficult to understand. It looks to be "pretty printed" so that it's easier to follow, and there's enough tags to show all the markup that's needed, but there's not an absurd amount. Most people would likely still be able to read the poem itself while looking at this xml file. This is the xml file for a poem on the Emily Dickinson Project. I've been using xml and oxygen for a while now, so I can read the markup relatively fine, but a beginner would probably look at this and have no clue what's going on. There's significantly more tags, and the file isn't lined up as nicely as the other one. The poem itself is also broken up a lot more, so trying to read it this way while looking at the xml file would be pretty annoying if you ask me.

[Rkd5429]

The first project I chose to review was[]( Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886). Right off the bat, you are introduced to the individual that this project aims to document the final decades of her life by compiling letters, poems, scraps of paper, and more into a well crafted and visually pleasing website. Looking closer at some of the poems that the site documents, we get several options in how we get to view the poem from the regular reading view to pictures of the original paper. Alongside both of those we also have the option to download these poems in the form of an XML document.

Overall I enjoyed this project from how simplistic yet detailed it all was. The second project I looked at was the one done by our fellow Behrend students. [](Emily Dickinson Project (fascicles 16 and 6)) took the opposite approach from a calmer and older theme to a much brighter color scheme. This project in comparison to the prior is interesting in the sense that although the first has more information and more text to go off of, this project instead focuses on the comparison between original text and publications of them. An example of such can be found in the Dash Analysis Graph The graph above shows the rate at which published works reduced the amount of dashes in comparison to the original works by Dickinson. Although I feel like I should compare these two projects I don't believe that they are similar enough to do so. Yes, they both document works by Emily Dickinson but they focus on two distinct parts of her and her work. On one hand you have the full library of Dickinson with letters and poems included but on the other you have the documented changes from original work to published. Having that said, both are amazing in terms of what purpose these projects serve in the first place.

[afish2003]

For my analysis I compared Faciles 16 to Radical Scatters A 93-7 Here is a screenshot of each page in order

First I will cover the Dickinson Newtfire site. From first glance I can already say I like the UI of this one much more than the Radical Scatters. It's much more modern and user friendly. I also really like how it does a side by side comparison of the original text to the transcript. I also really liked how when you click on part of the written text it hops to it in the transcript. For the markup in the xml I thought it was very well structured and although I am not advanced to this level in XML, I feel for anyone who is, the structure and markup would be really easy to follow. The only comment I have about the Emily Dickinson page is that I wish there was a prompt/disclaimer that explained that you need to right click and download file for the markup as when you click it you just get the text and I had to google how to get the actual markup.

Here's an example of the markup for the Emily Dickinson poem: ` I felt a

Funeral

                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">funeral</rdg>
            </app><app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">,</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3"></rdg>
            </app> in my <app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">Brain</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">brain</rdg>
            </app>,</l>
            <l n="2">And <app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">Mourners</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">mourners</rdg>
            </app><app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh"></rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">,</rdg>
            </app> to and fro<app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh"></rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce">.</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#poems3">,</rdg>
            </app></l>
            <l n="3">Kept treading<app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">&#8212;</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">, </rdg>
            </app>treading<app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">&#8212;</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">, </rdg>
            </app>till it seemed</l>
            <l n="4">That <app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">Sense</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">sense</rdg>
            </app> was breaking through<app>
                <rdg wit="#df16 #fh">&#8212;</rdg>
                <rdg wit="#ce #poems3">.</rdg>
            </app></l>
        </lg>`

Next I will cover the Radical Scatters site. For my analysis I looked at the A 93-7 document. From first glance I can say the UI on this site looks not dated, but very traditionally done. Very similar to just about any scholarly site. Although this is not a bad thing I do very much enjoy the interactive structure used in the Emily Dickinson site much more. Since this is a much shorter piece, the xml markup was much shorter too so I will include the whole markup below. This markup was much easier to follow as a xml beginner, but this is just because the page author didn't do as much as the Emily Dickinson page author did. I honestly wish the Radical Scatters author tried to make the page more interactive because I think it just adds so much more depth and engagement for the reader and helps them to learn much more about the document and its history. The Radical Scatters A93-7 code is below: `<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

"Remember me"implored the Thief! Oh Hospitality!My Guest "Todayin Paradise" I give theeguaranty. That Courtesywill fair remainWhen the Delightis DustWith which wecite this mightiestcaseOf compensatedtrust - Of all we areallowed to hope But Affidavit standsThat this wasdue where mostwe fearBe unexpectedFriends.

        </div1>`

[rashemish]

Although I found all the websites provided insightful of Dickinson's poetic works, I was particularly drawn to the website that previous DIGIT students have created: https://dickinson.newtfire.org/16/1605.html#fs1605Map

As I begun to navigate the site, I found that each version of Dickinson's poem were different than each other in the most subtle ways.

Poetically, these small differences are a big deal, and I felt like that the XML behind this website reflected that too. The user flexibility of the website was very cool, I quite enjoyed how interactive it was, and therefore had to check out the XML myself.

I used this bit of code to really understand the XML markup, ` And then I heard them lift a

Box box ,

`

I noticed that this attribute focuses on the 9th verse if this particular poem, and each version is tagged in a "reading' or "rdg" tag. Then within each tag, a "witness" attribute is included that holds each version of the poem.

After looking at this website, I could not help myself and had to look at the open source Emily Dickinson website. https://www.edickinson.org/

(Looks kind of cool)

Following the instructions from #3 to help navigate the site, I found that the versions from the previous website I looked into were quite similar to the student website.

Although this website had one less version than the student made website, I found the consistencies within how the poems were archived quite neat.

[HarrBear37]

The first site I visited was (Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Late Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886) How I found my poem was clicking the "all documents carrying fragments" link. I click around each one seeing which one I liked the most. The original was little hard to read so I went to the reading view tab.

I liked the poem even though it was hard to read. I found it easy to mark it up. While reading, I could see ways I would mark it up in XML

With thanks for my health I send you Antony's Orchard, who paid his Heart for what his Eyes ate, only -

The second site I visited was (Emily Dickinson Project (fascicles 16 and 6)) First, I read the introduction. After, I clicked on the fascicle tab and went to fascicle 16. I read poem 8.

I found it intriguing to read. Like the first poem I read, I could easily see what I would mark up on the poem.

Just laying light—no Soul will wink Except it have a flaw— The H Sound ones, like the Hills— shall stand stand up — No Lightning, scares away drives — The Perfect, nowhere be afraid— They bear their dauntless fearless— tranquil— Heads, When others, dare not go at Noon, walk at noon— Protected by their deeds—

[ashlynnallgeier]

For my analysis, I compared Radical Scatters and the Emily Dickinson Archive. Below is a screenshot of each webpage in the order stated.

One thing that stuck out to me with the Radical Scatters site was the organization of the files. There were categories based on original file location, current location of the manuscript, and composition date. I also liked the addition of the media, hand, paper types, features, etc. The poems were easy to read on the site and it was very easy to navigate to other poems. I also liked the theme of this webpage; the colors and design choice made it seem kinda old fashioned like the poems. The markup in this website is very simple and easy to follow, as a beginner coder in XML.

For the Emily Dickinson Archive, I liked the word search feature so you can see how many poems have certain keywords, or if you only know a few words of the poem, you can easily search it up and find the poem. I also really loved the photo of the original document alongside the text directly in the website, making it easy to read. I personally like this project better due to the photos of the original transcripts and the easy word search. I could not find a way to access the XML code for this site.

[mrs7068]

The "Radical Scatters" website was very interesting to me. Finding content is very straightforward. It provides four different versions of the text which cater to varying levels of interest and involvement with the text. The metadata is very thorough.

The site on newtfire.org had some slightly confusing navigation, specifically that it changed after selecting one of the fascicles, and at first glance, I was confused. But, once I got to a specific poem, I appreciated the ability to compare the small details between versions.

On both sites, the XML was easy to access and understand. This snippet from Radical Scatters, poem A 540, includes one of my favorite simple but effective ways of marking something about the writing rather than the text itself:

<rdg corresp="a540.2" xml:id="a540.1">
   were better
   <lb/>
   <unclear rend="illegible" reason="ill-formed handwriting">nay</unclear>
</rdg>

[emikalie]

First site I looked at was the newtfire along with Poem 5. I thought it was easy to get around on the site to see the different sections and subcatagories.

Second site was the Radical Scatters site along with a Poem I found titled "Orient". This site was very user friendly and easy to navigate to the different poems.

The following code was in the second poem I looked at and disclose an issue with the document itself:

`<damage, document torn>

<reverse (A 760a), paper flipped over right and rotated one-quarter turn left> < a760.txt.2; fragment_extrageneric >`