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Mediating and connecting: versatile digital publishing in the Edison Papers

Chapter of: Digital editing and publishing in the twenty-first century

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Metadata
TitleMediating and connecting
Subtitleversatile digital publishing in the Edison Papers
ContributorCaterina Agostini(author)
Paul Israel(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.62637/sup.GHST9020.19
Landing pagehttps://books.sup.ac.uk/sup/catalog/book/sup-9781917341073/chapter/20
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightCaterina Agostini and Paul Israel
PublisherScottish Universities Press
Published on2025-04-29
Long abstractIn this chapter we discuss a framework for reconfiguring the Thomas A. Edison Papers as an integrated digital edition of primary sources. In the digital edition, stratified levels of sources enhance the accessibility of complex historical collections in digital environments. The concept of providing multiple layers of access was already implicit in the Edison Papers online book and image editions. Our reader-centered approach enables an interactive experience displaying primary sources both from text- and image-based collections documenting the work of Edison. The resulting reading experience occurs in International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) interfaces that can deliver images and texts from multiple servers on the Web. IIIF-compliant images present materials to readers in a coherent way, allowing deep zoom, comparison, page layout, and annotation through a IIIF image viewer, Mirador Viewer. The digital edition is customized, based on readers’ queries, and the interconnected design can potentially promote collaborative reading, scholarship, and applications in pedagogy, resulting in a versatile investigation of technological advancements and industrialization in Edison’s lifetime.
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Caterina Agostini

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1695-0433

Caterina Agostini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University Bloomington. She is co-PI in the Chymistry of Isaac Newton and the Harriot Papers, specializing in digital editions of early modern scientific texts. She has researched and developed reading and annotation methods in the Thomas A. Edison Papers. Caterina has published on Galileo Galilei, Renaissance travelogues, and digital humanities methods. She is a co-chair of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF).

Paul Israel

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0425-5428

Paul Israel is director and general editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He joined the project in 1980 and became director in 2002. To date, the project has produced nine volumes of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison. Its online digital image edition includes over 154,000 documents. In 2005 the Society for the History of Technology awarded the Edison Papers a one-time retrospective award as a model reference work published since the founding of the Society in 1958. Dr Israel was also awarded the Society’s 2000 Edelstein [Dexter Prize] for his book Edison: A Life of Invention (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). In addition, he is the author of From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830– 1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) and co-author with Robert Friedel of Edison’s Electric Light: The Art of an Invention (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010; Rutgers University Press, 1986). Dr Israel’s work examines technological creativity, the origins of modern innovation, patent regimes and intersections between science, technology and industry. He also has been a consultant on exhibits at several museums and historic sites and contributed to numerous television and radio documentaries.