Release Notes for MoEML v.6.4 Janelle Jenstad Author Tracey El Hajj Author Encoder Janelle Jenstad The Map of Early Modern Londonhttp://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/includes.xmlVictoria, BC, Canada
Department of English P.O.Box 3070 STNC CSC University of Victoria Victoria, BC Canada V8W 3W1
2016University of Victoria978-1-55058-519-3 Janelle Jenstad london@uvic.ca

Copyright held by The Map of Early Modern London on behalf of the contributors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Further details of licences are available from our Licences page. For more information, contact the project director, Janelle Jenstad, for specific information on the availability and licensing of content found in files on this site.

Born digital.

Most MoEML documents, or significant fragments with xml:id attributes, can be addressed using the mol: prefix and accessed through the web application with their id + .xml.

The molagas prefix points to the shape representation of a location on MoEML’s OpenLayers3-based rendering of the Agas Map.

Links to page-images in the Chadwyck-Healey Early English Books Online (EEBO) repository. Note that this is a subscription service, and may not be accessible to those accessing it from locations outside member institutions.

Links to page-images in the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA).

The mdt (MoEML Document Type) prefix used on catRef/target points to a central taxonomy in the includes file.

The mdtlist (MoEML Document Type listing) prefix used in linking attributes points to a listings page constructed from a category in the central MDT taxonomy in the includes file. There are two variants, one with the plain xml:id of the category, meaning all documents in the specified category, and one with the suffix _subcategories, meaning all subcategories of the category.

The molgls (MoEML gloss) prefix used on term/corresp points to a a glossary entry in the GLOSS1.xml file.

This molvariant prefix is used on ref/target attributes during automated generation of gazetteer index files. It points to an element in the generated variant spellings listing file which lists all documents which contain a particular spelling variant for a location.

This molajax prefix is used on ref/target attributes during the static build process, to specify links which point to MoEML resources which should not be loaded into the source page during standalone processing; instead, these should be turned into links to the XML source documents, and at HTML page load time, these should be turned into AJAX calls. This is to handle the scenario in which a page such as an A-Z index of the whole site would end up containing virtually the whole site inside itself.

The molstow prefix is used on facs attributes to link to the HCMC verison of the Stow facsimiles. Usually the first group is the year (1633) and then last is the image number (0001).

The molshows prefix is used on facs attributes to link to the copies of page-images from mayoral shows stored in the london account on the HCMC server. The first group is the year (1633), the second is the source repository, and then last is the image file name.

The sb prefix is used on ref/target attributes to link to Stow’s Books URLs at UToronto.

Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.

 Finished writing release notes. Wrote up new team. Wrote up Menu Changes Created file. 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. 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. 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 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 transcriptions 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 (see <ref target="https://www.uvic.ca/library/home/home/news/current/interview-with-gordon-fulton.php">Rare Books and Rare Generosity: An interview with Gordon Fulton</ref>). 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:

A full-length article on <ref target="mol:MOOR1">Moorfields</ref> by Tanya Kristin Schmidt, working under the guest editorship of Jean Howard A short article on <ref target="mol:ELEP1">The Elephant</ref> by Albion College student Emily Allison, working under the guest editorship of Ian MacInnes A full-length article on <ref target="mol:FINS2">Finsbury Field</ref> by Kate Casebeer, working under the guest editorship of Ian MacInnes A full-length article on <ref target="mol:BRID2">Bridewell</ref> by Caitlin Smith, under the guest editorship of Amy Tigner A full-length article on <ref target="mol:STPA3">St. Paul’s Churchyard</ref> by Sarah-Jayne Ainsworth, working under the guest editorship of Briony Frost at Exeter University.

New location stubs added by MoEML team members and being published with v.6.4 include:

St. Peter Upon Cornhill Swan Alley (Cornhill) Cow Face (a market) Pope’s Head Alley Dudley’s House St. Peter’s College Rents Grantam Lane Atrium (St. Paul’s) King’s Wardrobe The Castle (in Cornhill) The Barge (in Cheapside) Henry VII’s Chapel Cokedon Hall The Compter (Bread Street) Compter Alley Deep Ditch Almshouses (Wood Street) Ratten Lane Dark Lane Swan Alley (Coleman Street) Coldharbour Lane The Deanery (St. Paul’s)

In addition, we have 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.

Statistics

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

We added: 2572 new toponymic variants to the Gazetteer 151 new locations to the Placeography, including 63 bookshops added by Erica Zimmer 1594 new historical people to the Persography 205 new bibliography entries to the Bibliography 75 new organizations to the Orgography 12 new entries to the Glossary

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 tab—Tools. Items from the old About menu are now distributed more logically between the Toolsand About menus.

The old About section included:

News Mission Team Acknowledgements Contributors Contribute Project CV Praxis Teaching Employment Opportunities Contact Us Cite MoEML

The new About menu contains only:

Team Contributors Mission News Project Evolution Project CV Acknowledgements

Items on the new Tools all begin with a verb. The menu items are:

Encode (Praxis) Use the Map Cite MoEML Teach with MoEML Contribute to MoEML Work for MoEML Find Resources Contact MoEML

Adding Project Evolution required us to change the Project CV. The old Project CV page included:

New Directions History of the Site Publications and Presentations Reviews, Media Coverage, and References

The new Project CV page lists:

Publications and Presentations Reviews, Media Coverage, and References

The new Project Evolution includes:

History Release Notes (new) Progress Charts (new) Project Plans New Directions

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!

News of Team Members

Since the release of v.6.3 in June 2018, MoEML’s team has said farewell to a number of members and has welcomed new members. Amorena Roberts ended her long tenure with MoEML in the summer of 2018. Brooke Isherwood, Carly Cumpstone, and Chase Templet finished their Library-funded work on the Gazetteer in August 2018. Chase stayed on with MoEML to work on the mayoral shows, leading Chris Horne, Lucas Simpson, and Kate LeBere who worked full-time on the pageant books in Summer 2019. We finished our work on the old-spelling transcriptions of the pageant books just as Chase defended his MA essay on the Parnassus plays in August 2019.

Chris Horne and Lucas Simpson recently defended their honours theses in English and Kate LeBere recently defended her honours thesis in History. Chris and Kate were then poached by Linked Early Modern Drama Online (LEMDO) to spend the winter working on remediations of early modern plays. Lucas won a JCURA award to work on converting the gazetteer data into RDF triples for ingestion into the LINCS triplestore.

In January 2020, the team welcomed Ryann McQuarrie-Salik as Project Manager. After switching to remote work in April 2020, the team welcomed a group of new research assistants: Jamie Zabel, Nicole Vatcher, Amogha Lakshmi Halepuram Sridhar, and Molly Rothwell. These research assistants have been integral to the progress of the 1598 and 1633 editions of Survey of London.