How to Publish a Digital Edition

Use free and open source tools to publish a digital edition.

A digital edition is an online reproduction of a primary source, such as a literary or historical manuscript. These texts are often carefully transcribed and sometimes translated into other languages. Digital editions are often displayed with a high resolution image of the text to the left and a transcription or translation to the right. Text is sometimes presented diplomatically, meaning that the text is laid out as close as possible to the original, accounting for deletions and additions, writing in the margins, etc.

Digital editions are an important tool for literary scholars and historians. However, they can be difficult to mount without technical staff and support. In this solution, we will demonstrate how to go from a set of page images to a functioning online digital edition. Using FairCopy and EditionCrafter, we will introduce a workflow for organizing, editing, and publishing a digital edition. Both of these tools were purpose built for digital humanities scholars to create digital editions.

This solution also requires a GitHub account. In this solution, we make use of GitHub features such as forking repositories, Code Spaces, and GitHub Pages. All of these features are available with a free account. We also mention using Google Sheets. None of these features are required to use EditionCrafter and FairCopy, but using them makes it easier to accomplish our goal. If you are not familiar with Github, don’t worry, the videos below will walk you through the steps.

FairCopy

FairCopy is a specialized word processor for the study and transcription of primary sources in literature and history. It is designed to help scholars create digital editions of primary sources. We can use FairCopy to create a TEI/XML file, which is the format that EditionCrafter uses to create digital editions. FairCopy is free and open source software for MacOS and Windows 11 users. You can download FairCopy for free on the FairCopy website.

EditionCrafter

EditionCrafter is a free and easy-to-use tool for scholars, educators, and research institutions to publish digital editions in a low-cost and sustainable manner. EditionCrafter was developed as a collaboration between the Making and Knowing Project and Performant Software Solutions to address the need for a scholarly publication tool that integrates primary sources, commentary, and textual analysis.

The easiest way to start using EditionCrafter is to make a copy of the provided template project on GitHub. This template is configured to run on GitHub Code Spaces. This is a virtual development environment that runs in the cloud. You can access it from your browser and it comes pre-configured with all the software you need to run EditionCrafter.

Next Steps

This solution covers the basics of creating a digital edition using FairCopy and EditionCrafter, but we have just scratched the surface of this topic. Look for future solutions to related topics.