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The Collation

Q & A: Paul Dingman, EMMO Project Manager

face-pic_Paul-DPaul Dingman started at the Folger Shakespeare Library in late May of this year as the Project Manager for EMMO (Early Modern Manuscripts Online). Before that, he served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Alfred University where he taught classes in history and literature of the medieval/early modern periods. Paul earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Rochester in 2013; he also has an M.A. in Theatre from the SUNY University Center at Albany. Most of his research focuses on the cultural history of pre-modern Europe, especially the ways in which imaginative literature often reveals submerged ideas or attitudes; he wrote his dissertation on the expression of noble friendship in popular epic poems, romances, and drama as well as in contemporary letters, treatises, and chronicles. In between (and sometimes during) his scholarly pursuits, Paul worked many years in the field of Information Technology on projects ranging from providing software instruction to designing databases to managing networks, software upgrades, IT budgets, and websites. These dual career paths have complemented each other well and helped lead to Paul’s keen interest in the digital humanities along with more traditional humanistic studies. While attending a panel this past April on data visualizations of historical documents at the Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS) Conference in Montreal, he heard the word “centaur” used (positively) to describe individuals who feel at ease in both the academic and computing worlds and has since adopted that label with a smile. 

Comments

Good piece. You say “Our online tools, Dromio (designed in part to facilitate transcriptions) and EMMOgen (designed to manage EMMO transcriptions) continue to develop”. Are they currently available online to users not on-site? If so, what are the URLs? If not, when?

William Ingram — September 19, 2014

Reply

Currently, the enhanced Dromio and EMMOgen are still under development. We expect to start testing these tools in November and December of this year and plan to release them for use on the EMMO site in the early summer of 2015. Our larger crowdsourcing platform for EMMO should also launch around that time, and this tool will be available to all who wish to contribute transcriptions, regardless of previous experience with paleography.

Paul Dingman — September 24, 2014

Reply

Good piece. You say “Our online tools, Dromio (designed in part to facilitate transcriptions) and EMMOgen (designed to manage EMMO transcriptions) continue to develop”. Are they currently available online to users not on-site? If so, what are the URLs? If not, when?

William Ingram — December 24, 2015

Reply

Good question. Dromio is not widely available at this point as the program is still under development though some individuals and institutions familiar with it are using/testing the beta version. Discussions are underway to clear the remaining hurdles for Dromio’s full release, but I don’t have a firm date yet as to when that will happen. You can be certain we will announce the news when it occurs!
As of December 8, 2015, however, online users can contribute transcriptions via the Shakespeare’s World website (developed by Zooniverse in partnership with EMMO). Much of our attention has been focused on this website in the past few months. I encourage you and others to give it a try: http://www.shakespearesworld.org/#/

Paul Dingman — January 6, 2016

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