‘So near while apart’: Correspondence Editions as Critical Library Pedagogy and Digital Humanities Methodology

Abstract

The following case study describes two library-led text encoding projects involving correspondence collections. The first, a documentary edition of personal papers held by Peter Still, a former slave, was conceived as an independent research project involving the participation of two undergraduate research assistants; the second, based upon letters to and from the Rutgers College War Service Bureau (1917–1919), has been designed as a two-week text encoding unit in a proposed undergraduate course on data and culture. These two projects, both featuring the letter as their object of study, are compared and contrasted as models of data and process, affording reflections on the overlapping concerns of the library instruction and digital humanities communities of practice. I propose viewing text encoding projects, particularly those that focus on lesser known creators or on life documents such as letters, as a means of accessing both critical library pedagogy and digital humanities methodology. By developing such projects, librarians address a number of collection and instruction related objectives of the library, while offering a valuable introduction to a set of methods that are of increasing importance to undergraduate education. Furthermore, these projects may be conducted at smaller scales, by reusing and adapting methods and software shared by the digital humanities community, thereby limiting reliance on institutional partners for technology and infrastructure support, which may not be forthcoming in under-resourced institutional contexts.