Continued from Wednesday’s post, Part 1 Recap of Blake Camp 2014. Also see Morris’s Brief History of Blake Camp.
DAY 2, Friday 14 June
Session 5
E-books, Search Terms, and New Image Sources
We begin with a long discussion of the pros and cons of issuing e-book editions of works in the Archive—focusing perhaps on developing Blake’s most popular and widely studied works in responsive portable formats. Among many other issues discussed are the thorny problems of copyright.
Bob Essick leads a discussion of “search terms” (the extensive list of keywords that are basic components of our image-search capability). As new works are added to the Archive, the list of terms grows. The question is always how to keep the list up to date, clean, and consistent.
We discuss the possible uses of image sources such as ArtStor but couldn’t see any in the short term. Too many problems stand in the way.
Session 6
Miscellaneous
Archive bibliographer Mark Crosby calls our attention to the Wikipedia entry on the Archive that was initiated earlier this year by students at Kansas State. Of course we don’t and can’t control the entry, but we want to monitor it to see that it accurately reflects the Archive.
We continue to explore the potential of social media—the Cynic Sang blog (“Unofficial Blog of the William Blake Archive,” run by the BAND group at the University of Rochester), the Twitter feed initiated by BAND, and other possibilities, such as a Facebook page.
We continue the discussion of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly that was begun yesterday. Discussion centers on the congruence between the current online version and the version that will appear in the Archive: how similar should they, and can they, be? Again, we need an XML export of our files from Open Journal Systems format to see what problems we’re facing. Managing editor Sarah Jones will supply those files.
Session 7
Publication Schedule 2014-early 2016
We decide, as an experiment, to try doubling the rate of publication. We come up with a provisional list by month:
- July: Thel N / “Enoch” / Cincinnati collection list (note: now published)
- September: Blake’s illustrations to the poems of Thomas Gray with complete illustration descriptions for searchability
- November: Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 2000+
- January: Four Zoas (preview)
- February: The Song of Los copy F (completes the set)
- March: Blake’s illustrations to Dante with complete illustration descriptions for searchability
- April: There is No Natural Religion copies A, D, M (completes the set)
- June: Blake’s Notebook (preview)
- July: Visions of the Daughters of Albion R
- August: A decade unit of pencil drawings (Bob Essick supplied a list of possibilities shortly after Blake Camp)
- September: Tiriel, the manuscript and several drawings
- November: Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 1990s
- January 2016: a group of Blake’s illustrations to Shakespeare
- March 2016: Blake’s illustrations to Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (water colors and engravings, well over 500 objects)
As always, our projected publication list is tentative at best. For many different reasons, we frequently substitute other works for those in the schedule.
We end day 2 of Blake Camp 2014 with brief discussions of possible acquisitions of new images in all categories, including (among others) drawings, manuscripts, typographic works, and paintings the painful but intriguing problems of editing Blake’s marginalia, a task that falls to BAND at Rochester the possibility of incorporating into the Archive a history of Blake’s reception, which would take advantage of the increasing availability of 19th century books on the web.
Blake Camp 2015 will happen later than usual—in September?—because Joe Viscomi will be away in London and Madrid all year.
Done. Two decades + 1. That’s a lot of Blake Camps.
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