EARLY MODERN FRENCH WOMEN WRITERS:
PROJECT OUTLINE

RATIONALE
The mission of Wilson Library's Electronic Text Research Center (ETRC) is to assist faculty and students in exploring new research avenues offered by the existence of primary data in electronic form. Numerous full-text files in the humanities are already available for consultation and manipulation; but in order to increase faculty and student awareness of the benefits of working with SGML-encoded texts, we decided to develop a broad-based text creation project that would a) attract user involvement by focusing on an area of interest to a range of departments, and b) draw on research materials already available in the Library's general collections. The primary goal of this project is to serve as a research and teaching tool, rather than a major preservation effort.

SCOPE
With these goals in mind we decided to focus on a project in the area of women's studies. Working with faculty and students in various departments, we identified two main areas of interest which now constitute the two components of our project, each headed by a Steering Committee and Advisory Board. One component involves Women's Travel Writing, 1830-1930. The other component involves Early Modern French Women Writers (EMFWW).

The EMFWW Project focuses on important women writers irrespective of genre. Its coverage begins around 1400, and continues to 1700. Our early focus has included Christine de Pizan, Diane de Poitiers, Louise Labé, Madeleine de Scudéry, Marguerite de Navarre, Marie de Gournay, and Pernette du Guillet. We are about to mount texts by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy and Mme de Montpensier; we also have a working list of 13 other women writers from the period.

The EMFWW project is progressing in consultation with the well-known ARTFL Project, and ARTFL's Assistant Director is a member of our advisory board. ARTFL has been keen to increase its coverage of women's texts, and has already begun to digitize more texts by French women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

TEXT SELECTION
The EMFWW Steering Committee has identified several target authors and texts on which to focus in the early stages of our project. The criteria used to select these texts were established in conjunction with the stated goals of the project (to serve as a teaching and research tool). A major concern is to make important texts available while expanding the choice of texts beyond the canon--so as to reflect the interests of modern scholarship. We are in the process of refining our criteria; to date we have identified the following:
As we proceed we will consult with the EMFWW Advisory Board regarding our initial suggestions, as well as later desiderata.

LANGUAGE
The ARTFL database contains only French-language texts; English translations are not included. For the time being we will follow this practice, although we may consider working with translated texts at a later point.

TEXT CREATION
Since the project is designed as a teaching tool we work with different approaches to text generation. We try to emphasize use of scanning software (especially Cuneiform and FineReader); but early modern French texts are complex, and we employ keyboarding for certain texts, especially when poorly printed.

ENCODING POLICY
Since we intend to work closely with the ARTFL Project, we need to ensure that our encoding practice does not conflict with their requirements. However, we have begun by adapting Indiana's Victorian Women Writers Project TEI-based guidelines (since we will also be using them for the Women's Travel component of our project). We may see fit to introduce amendments as we proceed.

PROJECT ASSISTANCE
The ETRC has just received additional funding, part of which will be directed to this project. In addition, the ETRC student assistants devote some time to this project, in order to increase their expertise. We also welcome graduate student volunteers.

As we proceed, however, our intent is to seek additional financial assistance from various university programs and outside funding sources. One component of such requests will be for project assistants to speed the digitization process.

Finally, ARTFL staff are interested in developing a joint proposal for external funding, in order to broaden the scope of our project.

TEXT DELIVERY
The texts are made available for free access over the web using Enigma Corporations's SGML-based electronic publishing software suite, particularly its DynaWeb component.

Revised 6.29.00