The Cervantes Project: Steps to a Customizable and Interlinked On-Line Electronic Variorum Edition Supporting Scholarship

Abstract

Abstract. The Cervantes Project, housed under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries at Texas A&M University, aims to provide a comprehensive on-line research and reference site on the life and works of the author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). This activity is a joint collaboration among researchers in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Texas A&M University. This paper outlines the work being conducted by the project, focusing on the creation of an Electronic Variorum Edition of Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Integrating Diverse Research in a Digital Library Focused on a Single Author

“…We developed an electronic variorum edition (EVE), a reader's interface (VERI), and a variant editor (MVED) [5], and are in the process of populating a collection of a scope previously unavailable to the Cervantes scholar. Currently, digital images of ten copies of the 1605 princeps edition, one copy of the 1615 princeps edition and one copy of the three-volume Bowle edition (1781) are available online.…”

“…We made his works available via the Cervantes Project web site in a variety of editions in several versions (facsimile, old-spelling, modernized, English) along with the interfaces, hypertext links, and search engines to facilitate their use at multiple levels [13]. We have developed an electronic variorum edition (EVE) and are populating it with a text collection previously unavailable to the Cervantes scholar [5]. While work is ongoing in these areas, we are expanding the scope of our project to include resources to support historical and biographical research, investigations into the impact of Cervantes' cultural environment on his writings, and studies of popular and scholarly artifacts based on or inspired by Cervantes.…”

Tools for a new generation of scholarly edition unified by a tei-based interchange format

“…Previously [4], we have described the tools developed by our Cervantes Project to create an Electronic Variorum Edition (EVE) of Don Quixote based on facsimiles of the early significant editions, published between 1605 and 1637. In the process of carrying out this project, we have digitized and transcribed microfilmed copies of over 40 copies of the editions, including 9 each of the rare initial printings of the book's two parts.…”

Interactive Timeline Viewer (ItLv): A Tool to Visualize Variants among Documents

“…We are in the process of creating an Electronic Variorum Edition (EVE) of Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra's (Spain, 1547-1616) Don Quixote [4,5,6]. The EVE will be included in the Cervantes Digital Library (CDL), part of the ongoing Cervantes Project [13].…”