2017/01/01 by Mellissa Hinton, Hinton, Mellissa
Social Sciences · #South African History and Culture
paper · doi:10.18716/ride.a.7.1
Jesse Merandy’s legacy project, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: An Online Critical Edition (2008-09), presents new avenues for reading and studying American poet Walt Whitman’s iconic work. Aimed at an audience of students and scholars, the site includes the text of Whitman’s acclaimed poem as it evolved through five editions of Leaves of Grass published during the poet’s lifetime. The site also includes critical commentary and analysis; edition comparisons; still and moving images; audio files; and a walking tour of Brooklyn, New York. The site is archived as an issue of Mickle Street Review, an online journal published by Rutgers University at its Camden, New Jersey campus. Its archiving ensures a measure of stability and user expectation that Merandy’s website will remain accessible as an open access resource. However, the static archiving also prevents site updating. As a result, many broken links remain on the site, as do typos, and textual transcription errors. There is no evidence of TEI/XML coding which limits reusability of text. Since quality transcription is expected in a scholarly digital edition, as is an XML layer, this site cannot be considered a scholarly digital edition. In spite of the limitations, however, Merandy’s project is a fascinating one that provides the user with a multi-sensory experience that transcends what one would have experienced in a print-only environment.