One of the most common formats in digital documentary editions is the side-by-side layout (Pierazzo, 2014). It allows us to compare a digital facsimile with the transcription of the original document, a potentially useful feature for researchers interested in the “evidentiary value” (Kline and Perdue, 2013) of the consulted materials.

As part of a larger research project at the CVCE, Diplomacy within Western European Union (WEU), we are working on a digital edition using this dual layout. The edition will include XML-TEI P5 encoded documents and digital images of the original sources from the WEU archives. An overview of the collection and the corresponding workflow are presented in Part 1.

The work is in ongoing, and we are currently adapting the EVT (Edition Visualization Technology) framework to the CVCE’s needs (existing and intended Web site architecture, different types of documents and projects, users’ requests, etc.). As shown in the demo, the tool provides a series of features such as side-by-side visualisation, navigation, image-text linking, “hot” areas highlighting and zoom-in/out in the image.

Within a CVCE – EVT team collaboration, a student from the University of Pisa, Italy, will be involved this summer, together with the CVCE’s DH Lab, in building the edition starting from the EVT model.

References

Kline, Mary-Jo. Holbrook Perdue, Susan. 2013. A Guide to Documentary Editing. Third Edition. Online version. ADE, UVA Press.

Pierazzo, Elena. 2014. “Digital Documentary Editions and the Others”. In Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing, Volume 35.