The Melville Electronic Library

The Melville Electgronic Library (MEL) will consist of several interconnected "rooms" and "studios" in which users will find the different kinds of materials and services to help them conduct their Melville-related research. Thus far, we have projected four such rooms: The Library, Art Gallery, Hypertext Room, and our pedagogical room "First Encounters." Each room will have in it separate areas ("desks" or "studios") containing different categories of materials.

The MEL user will find two "desks": one Primary, the other Secondary.

• The Primary Desk provides Electronic Texts of all Melville works, including all extant manuscripts, all textually significant editions of each work, and Melville's correspondence. Photographs of manuscripts will be accompanied by readable transcriptions; editions will be word-searchable. Users will also be able to link up to any hypertext feature developed for specific Melville works.
  
  
• The Secondary Desk consists of electronic versions of major research tools related to Melville, such as The Melville Log, Melville Dissertations, A Checklist of Melville Reviews, Melville's Reading, Melville's Sources, A Companion to Melville Studies, and so on. A complete bibliography of Melville criticism will also be offered, with links to abstracts of selected items.

The Art Gallery is a second proposed room in MEL. It will have at least two "studios." One studio will contain photo-reproductions of Melville's own collection of over 300 engravings. A second studio will enable users to view art works referenced in Melville's works. Appropriate links between and among artworks and texts will be created.

A third proposed room will bring together various hypertext programs related to specific Melville works.

In our fourth room tentatively called "First Encounters," users will have the opportunity to share and discuss strategies for teaching Melville works.

TextLab will be an innovative feature allowing for the collaborative transcription and editing of Melville's manuscripts and his revision process.

NEH DIGITAL START-UP GRANT AWARDED
March 2008

John Bryant and Hofstra University's Faculty Computing Service (Judith Tabron, director) has been awarded a $23,000 grant to begin software development for MEL's Text Lab, which will allow users to edit directly from images of Melville's manuscripts of "Monody" and selections from Billy Budd (made available through Harvard's Houghton Library). The grant will also cover a gathering of Melville scholars on October 23-24, 2008, to begin organizing the implementation of MEL. The NEH grant proposal outlines the rationale and details for the year-long project.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE NEH GRANT PROPOSAL

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