The Melville Electronic Library (MEL)

FAIN: RQ-50392-09

Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY 11549-1000)
John L. Bryant (Project Director: November 2008 to July 2013)

Creation of an online Melville "critical archive;" and the transcription, editing, and publication of the initial three Melville works selected for inclusion on the website.

The proposed project will launch the Melville Electronic Library (MEL), a born-digital "critical archive" that will, when completed, provide readers access to reliable digital versions of Melville's works and other research materials. To establish MEL's textual core, the editors will follow a fluid-text approach that preserves the textual integrity of meaningful variant versions of Melville's manuscript and printed work. Editorial teams will design MEL's TEI-XML and metadata schemas, prepare digital images of documents, generate diplomatic transcriptions and base versions, and encode revisions sites using TEI's P5 guidelines. Hofstra's Faculty Computing Service will continue to develop its NEH-funded transcription tool, TextLab. The project will complete stand-alone editions of three representative works--Moby-Dick, Battle-Pieces, and Billy Budd--which will serve as models for editing the remainder of Melville's works in manuscript and print, poetry and prose.