368
All these features describe some of the basic principles of any wiki project, and
furthermore almost any of them can be limited or empowered. For instance, one of
the most successful MediaWiki projects in the humanities is the Transcribe Bentham
Project,
10
developed by University College London, where thousands of non-scholar
users have been involved in the crowdsourced transcription of Jeremy Bentham’s
manuscripts (Causet et al. 2018). In this project, all users must be registered in order
to contribute to the transcription, whereas in Wikipedia users who are not registered
can also edit pages.
With regard to GATE, all of its contents can be browsed, read and queried by
anyone without any kind of registration. But things get interesting when someone
requests an account and logs onto the platform. Anyone can ask for an account, but
to activate an account, there is a short form to fill out. This procedure is slower than
usual, but it allows one to make direct contact with other users, to get to know them
better and also to address their collaboration according to their research interests.
Users with an account can contribute to the transcription, edit and annotate the
documents, create pages about the content of the texts, add new records to bibliographies and create and contribute to discussions.
The Angelo Secchi Project,
11
as one of the eight ongoing projects currently
hosted on GATE, also has all of this functionality. Its structure is divided into three
sections: ‘Correspondence’, ‘Works’ and ‘Bibliography’. The long-term plan is to
make the whole Angelo Secchi documentation held by APUG available on GATE,
giving priority to correspondence and bibliography.
To achieve this ambitious goal, there are some issues that must be addressed.
First of all, a general physical rearrangement of the papers needs to be done, especially of the almost 8000 letters in the correspondence. In addition, there is a need
for a preservation plan for the physical documents, since sometimes they may need
to be restored and they normally need to be filed in acid-free folders to guarantee
long-term preservation. Finally, because users will work on the documentation
online, all papers need to be digitalized.
21.3 Angelo Secchi Correspondence
The ‘Correspondence’ section has its own homepage with a brief introduction and
the option to do a full-text and metadata search. Currently, only a few letters from
the correspondence between Secchi and Pietro Tacchini (Chinnici and Gasperini
2013) have been uploaded; these are to show GATE features to researchers interested in working on it. Each letter has a metadata page, which usually indicates the
following: names of sender and recipient, date of the letter, places of origin and
destination, dimensions, source and additional information. In the metadata page,
10 https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham
11 https://gate.unigre.it/mediawiki/index.php/Angelo_Secchi_Project
L. Mancini and M. M. Morales
All these features describe some of the basic principles of any wiki project, and
furthermore almost any of them can be limited or empowered. For instance, one of
the most successful MediaWiki projects in the humanities is the Transcribe Bentham
Project,
10
developed by University College London, where thousands of non-scholar
users have been involved in the crowdsourced transcription of Jeremy Bentham’s
manuscripts (Causet et al. 2018). In this project, all users must be registered in order
to contribute to the transcription, whereas in Wikipedia users who are not registered
can also edit pages.
With regard to GATE, all of its contents can be browsed, read and queried by
anyone without any kind of registration. But things get interesting when someone
requests an account and logs onto the platform. Anyone can ask for an account, but
to activate an account, there is a short form to fill out. This procedure is slower than
usual, but it allows one to make direct contact with other users, to get to know them
better and also to address their collaboration according to their research interests.
Users with an account can contribute to the transcription, edit and annotate the
documents, create pages about the content of the texts, add new records to bibliographies and create and contribute to discussions.
The Angelo Secchi Project,
11
as one of the eight ongoing projects currently
hosted on GATE, also has all of this functionality. Its structure is divided into three
sections: ‘Correspondence’, ‘Works’ and ‘Bibliography’. The long-term plan is to
make the whole Angelo Secchi documentation held by APUG available on GATE,
giving priority to correspondence and bibliography.
To achieve this ambitious goal, there are some issues that must be addressed.
First of all, a general physical rearrangement of the papers needs to be done, especially of the almost 8000 letters in the correspondence. In addition, there is a need
for a preservation plan for the physical documents, since sometimes they may need
to be restored and they normally need to be filed in acid-free folders to guarantee
long-term preservation. Finally, because users will work on the documentation
online, all papers need to be digitalized.
21.3 Angelo Secchi Correspondence
The ‘Correspondence’ section has its own homepage with a brief introduction and
the option to do a full-text and metadata search. Currently, only a few letters from
the correspondence between Secchi and Pietro Tacchini (Chinnici and Gasperini
2013) have been uploaded; these are to show GATE features to researchers interested in working on it. Each letter has a metadata page, which usually indicates the
following: names of sender and recipient, date of the letter, places of origin and
destination, dimensions, source and additional information. In the metadata page,
10 https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham
11 https://gate.unigre.it/mediawiki/index.php/Angelo_Secchi_Project
L. Mancini and M. M. Morales