Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4

Second Static Release

v.6.4 is our second release of a static version of our site. With this June 2020 release, we are making available two years of progress, including many new encyclopedia entries.

Goodbye News; Hello Release Notes

Having moved to the more sustainable and archivable static release model, MoEML no longer has the capacity to make news items or blog posts available on a rolling basis. Our last news item from 2018 was effectively our first set of release notes. News items and blog posts from 2018 and earlier will continue to be available on the site, but announcements are now made exclusively on social media. Follow MoEML on Facebook and/or Twitter for news. This present release brings with it our first formal Release Notes document. All release notes are available at the Release Notes landing page (About/Project Evolution/Release Notes in our new menu structure).

Walking Texts Progress

MoEML is currently preparing SSHRC-funded editions of all the early modern mayoral shows and of the four texts of John Stow’s Survey of London. The entire five-year project is called Walking Texts in Early Modern London (see the project summary).

Progress on the MoEML Anthology of Mayoral Shows

The anthology of old-spelling transcription of pageant books is now nearly complete. Most have been published; others are available in draft pending a final proofreading. In the project plan, we’d projected a 2023 completion date. The early completion of this anthology, thanks to an encoding push by the MoEML team in Summer 2019, means that scholars now have access to highly accurate, carefully checked transcriptions of these texts, with links to digital surrogates, full tagging of bibliographical features of the book, and light tagging of entities (names, dates, and toponyms). The trancriptions will help the editors now working to modernize, introduce, contextualize, annotate, and collate the texts. Mark Kaethler, MoEML’s Assistant Director, is taking the lead on the modern editions. He and Janelle Jenstad co-wrote the Editorial Guidelines last summer. The team has been working to obtain high-resolution open-access scans of the pageant books, to minimize our dependence on EEBO’s legendarily problematic scans of microfilms. You can read more about the project in the chapter that Mark and Janelle contributed to Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London, edited by J. Caitlin Finlayson and Amrita Sen.

Progress on Stow’s Survey

With the Fall 2019 acquisition of a fine copy of the 1598 Survey by the University of Victoria Libraries, we now have a complete set of the four editions. Dr. Gordon Fulton in the English Department at UVic found the copy and facilitated the purchase, the cost of which was shared jointly by Dr. Fulton, MoEML’s SSHRC grant, and the UVic Libraries. The Digitization Unit at UVic Libraries has scanned the entire volume for MoEML, as it has done for the 1603, 1618, and 1633 volumes. 1633 scans are available through the content management system and via marginal links in our slowly growing edition.
We’ve encoded 65 more chapters of the 1598 and 1633 surveys, adding entity tags for all dates, people, and locations. In the process of encoding 1633, we’ve made corrections to parallel passages in 1598 and added thousands of new entities to our databases.

New Resource: The Regnal Calendar

Dates in early modern texts are frequently given by the year of the reigning monarch. In theory, this dating system is straightforward. In practice, converting the regnal year to a span of dates is impossible because there’s no consensus on when regnal years begin and end.
For our own internal use at MoEML, we created a table of regnal dates from William I’s conquest of England to the execution of Charles I in 1649. The table lists the beginning and end points of each regnal year as given by C.R. Cheney in A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History, the 1577 and 1587 editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles, and the 1598 edition of Stow’s Survey, where those sources consider a monarch to have reigned. (Holinshed and Stow do not list the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey, for example.) We then gave each regnal year an @xml:id. The first year of Elizabeth’s reign is thus r_ELIZ1_01. This system means that MoEML can tag regnal dates in primary sources without having to determine what the author considered to be the beginning and end of the regnal year. Our tagging points users to the regnal calendar, where some of the calendrical variation is captured.
Such a table will have value beyond the workstations of the MoEML team at UVic. We therefore share it with our users. Feedback is always welcome!
We have a number of other finding aids and resources in draft. Some may prove useful to other scholars even in their draft state. You’ll find a complete list of such resources on this page.

New Content; New Contributors

New contributions from students include:
New location stubs added by MoEML team members and being published with v.6.4 include:
In addition, we’ve welcomed 62 new contributors whose contributions are at various point in the editorial and encoding workflow.

Changes to Location Ontology

Over time, the original category of Sites has been refined and subdivided. With this release, MoEML has made the following changes:
  • We have ADDED the new category of Residences, in order to make our ontology interoperable with that of REED London Online. Some of the locations formerly in Sites are now in the new Residence category.
  • We have ADDED the new category of Parishes, in order to make a distinction between the church building and the parish the building served.
  • We have ADDED the new category of Chapels in order to be able to locate chapels within other structures.
  • We have RENAMED the former Livery Company Halls category to Halls. The slightly more capacious category includes locations like the Middle Temple Hall.
  • We have ADDED the new category of Inns of Court, to which Middle Temple and other law schools belong.

New Partnerships

Pedagogical Partnerships News

MoEML has partnered with two new pedagogical partners. Una McIlvenna at Melbourne University undertook a MoEML module on Newgate Prison. Joyce Boro at the Université de Montréal and her ANG6470 class encoded Thomas Dekker’s The Wonderful Year.

The London Parish Project

Under the direction of Christopher Highley of Ohio State University, the London Parish Project will produce entries for all of the parishes in London. Dr. Highley is assembling an impressive team of experts to write these encyclopedia entries. Parishes were the heart of London communal life, and we will learn about London social networks from this project.

Browsing the Bookstalls of St. Paul’s

Erica Zimmer of MIT has undertaken a major project on the bookstalls of St. Paul’s churchyard. The project will map and track the names, locations, and ownership of bookstalls over time. The first stage of the project entailed adding dozens of bookshops to the MoEML placeography. Given the literary nature of MoEML, this wealth of information is particularly valuable.

Progress on the Databases

To see a complete list of statistics, go to Statistics.

New Resources and Tools

Submit an Agas Correction or Edition

The MoEML Agas map now has a new feature that gives users a direct means of submitting corrections. We’ve added a button (✉) at the end of the Agas map menu bar (top far right). Upon clicking, the button launches your e-mail client application in a new window, with a template that will send to london@uvic.ca; it provides you with a list of information that you need to fill out, as well as necessary guidelines.

Interface Changes

Menu Changes

With the growth and development of the project over the last two years, some of MoEML’s most important assets have moved down the menus and become difficult to find. We’ve restructured the top menu to make the project’s assets and tools more findable.
v.6.4 introduces some changes to the menu bar. The previous top menu consisted of five (5) tabs (Map, Encyclopedia, Library, Stow, and About). V.6.4 introduces a sixth (6th) tab—Tools. Items from the old About menu are now distributed more logically between the Toolsand About menus.
The old About section included:
The new About menu contains only:
Items on the new Tools all begin with a verb. The menu items are:
Adding Project Evolution required us to change the Project CV. The old Project CV page included:
The new Project CV page lists:
The new Project Evolution includes:
The landing pages list the same options as the drop-down menu of a given tab.
We hope that users will find these new menu items more intuitive. All page URLs and bookmarks remain the same as they’ve always been. Feedback is welcome!

References

Cite this page

MLA citation

Jenstad, Janelle, and Tracey El Hajj. Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4 The Map of Early Modern London, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 15 Sep. 2020, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/release_notes_064.htm.

Chicago citation

Jenstad, Janelle, and Tracey El Hajj. Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4 The Map of Early Modern London. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed September 15, 2020. https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/release_notes_064.htm.

APA citation

Jenstad, J., & El Hajj, T. 2020. Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4 In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London. Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/release_notes_064.htm.

RIS file (for RefMan, EndNote etc.)

Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

TY  - ELEC
A1  - Jenstad, Janelle
A1  - El Hajj, Tracey
ED  - Jenstad, Janelle
T1  - Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4
T2  - The Map of Early Modern London
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/09/15
CY  - Victoria
PB  - University of Victoria
LA  - English
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/release_notes_064.htm
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/xml/standalone/release_notes_064.xml
ER  - 

RefWorks

RT Web Page
SR Electronic(1)
A1 Jenstad, Janelle
A1 El Hajj, Tracey
A6 Jenstad, Janelle
T1 Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4
T2 The Map of Early Modern London
WP 2020
FD 2020/09/15
RD 2020/09/15
PP Victoria
PB University of Victoria
LA English
OL English
LK https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/release_notes_064.htm

TEI citation

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