This pilot project is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of a new kind of networked electronic access tool for collections of rare documents. This project, in keeping with similar initiatives elsewhere (see the CETH SGML Resources page), has adopted the international standard for text encoding Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML, ISO 8879), according to the guidelines of the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) and of EAD (Encoded Archival Description), and demonstrates the way documents created in these two forms can be linked to each other.
The basic design for this resource follows the finding aid to the William Elliot Griffis Collection, held in Rutgers University Special Collections and Archives. In its pilot implementation, the electronic finding aid appears in skeleton form: all groups and series in the Griffis Collection are listed; two series are listed in detail, to the item level (Group I Series 15 and Group II Series 2, the two "Student Essays" series). By this arrangement, the framework is fully worked out within which a complete collection inventory can be provided electronically, with supporting documentation. The intellectual arrangement of the collection is reproduced in the finding aid's structure, which in turn is mirrored by the SGML encoding.
This finding aid provides and extends the traditional functions of documents of this kind, offering researchers with information about a collection and its contents, and enabling librarians to locate and manage collection materials easily. Because it is an electronic resource encoded in SGML, however, the EAD finding aid serves other uses as well. Here, the finding aid is used as a "frame" or "envelope" within which another resource may be provided in electronic form: electronic editions of some of the rare manuscript materials held in the collection.
Certain listings in the finding aid -- entries for essays written by Japanese students of English in the 1870's -- are provided with hypertext links to electronic editions of the manuscripts. These editions, each providing transcriptions of the essays as well as images of the manuscript pages, take advantage of electronic technology to provide researchers with unprecedented access to these unique materials.
Our demonstration uses Inso Corporation's DynaWeb sofware for delivery of the texts. DynaWeb allows users to browse and search the SGML files through an HTML interface.
The William Elliot Griffis Collection, housed in Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives, is a major collection of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century print, manuscript, photographic and ephemeral materials relating largely to the early history of Japan-U.S. relations in the modern period.
Among the remarkable materials held in the Griffis Collection are two series of essays by Japanese students of English in the early years of the Meiji Restoration. After fifteen years of political turbulence in Japan (a period reflected in many of the essays), a new central government had been formed under the Meiji Emperor. Among its earliest measures, in keeping with its policies of modernization and adaptation of Western technologies, the Meiji reformers established schools following Western models of education. In 1871, William Elliot Griffis, already teaching in Japan at the behest of Matsudaira Shungaku, the forward-looking leader of the domain of Echizen, was called to Tokyo to help establish the first official schools along Western lines.
These essays were written by Griffis's students at the Kaisei Gakko, the forerunner of the present Tokyo University, and carefully saved by their teacher, who recognized the extraordinary qualities of the elite students he was charged to teach and who fully expected them to become leaders of the New Japan (as many of them did). The essays extant in the Griffis Collection, over 340 in number, cover a range of topics of personal, historical and cultural interest, and vividly depict the interest (and to some degree the frictions) of these early days of cross-cultural contact. In this pilot project, two of these essays, the autobiography of Komura Jutaro and an essay on the Japanese theater by a student named Isono, appear in electronic rendition. In the finding aid, they may be located in the "Autobiographies" and "Theater" subseries of the Student Essays series in Group I.
A second collection of student essays dates from the same period. William Elliot Griffis's sister, Margaret Clark Griffis, had come to Japan in 1872 to stay with her brother, and soon obtained a position teaching in a newly-formed school for girls (the Tokyo Government Girls' School, later to become the Peeresses' School). Notwithstanding -- or because of -- the youth and relative lack of experience of these writers, these essays reveal yet another perspective on the events and developments of the time. In this project, an autobiography by Sugi Yo appears in an electronic edition, linked through the Student Essays series in Group II (the Margaret Clark Griffis papers).
The Griffis Collection EAD Finding Aid and TEI/SGML transcriptions may be found at: http://ceth9.rutgers.edu:6336/dynaweb/ead/griffis/
The manuscript essays in this project, by Komura, Isono and Sugi, have been encoded according to the Guidelines of the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). The SGML document type definition (DTD) applied here combines the tag sets for prose, transcription, figures and linking. In addition to providing the documents with structural markup, TEI SGML is used to indicate where the manuscript is damaged, and where editorial interventions have changed the text, providing a normalized reading or interpolating missing text.
Scanned images of the manuscript originals are also included in the TEI editions, to be consulted with the transcription.
More information on SGML encoding for the Humanities and the TEI Guidelines, may be found at the CETH SGML Resources Page.
The 1996 alpha release version of the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) SGML document type definition (DTD) was initially used for the preliminary markup of the Griffis Finding Aid. In March 1999, the finding aid was modified to bring it into conformance with EAD version 1.0. Although this project demonstrates the feasibility of providing the entire collection finding aid in this form, only the two Student Essays series have been listed here to the item level. (Other series listings are in electronic form but have not been marked up in SGML.)
More information on the EAD DTD for archival finding aids, with links to other sites, may be found at the CETH SGML Resources Page.
This project was originally produced by Wendell Piez and Mary Jo Watts at CETH, April-July 1996. Delphine Khanna added "A Short Sketch of my Life" and "Letter from K. Komura to W. Griffis" during Summer 1997. Terry Catapano revised the Finding Aid in March-April, 1999. Terry Catapano and Delphine Khanna revised the Transcriptions in March 1999. Rick Anderson, Delphine Khanna, and Terry Catapano developed the DynaWeb interface in Winter 1999. We are grateful in acknowledging the support of Ryoko Toyama (Director, Rutgers University's New Brunswick Libraries) and Ruth J. Simmons (Curator, Griffis Collection, Rutgers University Libraries), without whom this project would have been impossible.
Comments and queries are welcome.
This page last updated April 9th, 1999
Copyright © 1996-1999 by CETH
