As Team Stainforth recovers women writers across four centuries, our paths merged last fall with CU Boulder Metadata Services Department (MSD) Librarians working on a new WikiData project. For the uninitiated, WikiData “…is a free, collaborative, multilingual, secondary database, collecting structured data to provide support for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, the other wikis of the Wikimedia … Continue reading Linking Data, Linking Projects
Adah Isaacs Menken
How serendipitous that on a day where I mulled over how Stainforth identified American women writers, by day’s end I should learn of someone new, thanks to Reverend Stainforth. Adah Isaacs Menken, an American actress and poet (1835-1868), was known to this British book collector, evidence of which is in his catalog. She identified one … Continue reading Adah Isaacs Menken
Another woman of color
I spoke too soon and take back my earlier snarky and wistful comments. Our man Stainforth had in his collection a piece written by Adah Isaacs Menken who was a nineteenth-century actress, artist and poet. I am not familiar with her story and will research this further, but her VIAF record identifies her as an … Continue reading Another woman of color
Identify and Identity
In continuing name-authority research for Stainforth writers who do not have VIAF records, I ponder how Reverend Stainforth identified American women writers to include in his private library. No doubt the book dealers with whom he worked recommended new authors and titles on a regular basis, yet he had his favorite reference tools which evince … Continue reading Identify and Identity
The Sisters Acton
In December of 1846, sisters Mary Harriet and Rose Acton published a 150-page volume entitled Poems. Finding biographical entries or information about the sisters proved challenging. Early in our Stainforth DH project, neither author had a virtual international authority file record (VIAF) but recently I found that each has a stub of a VIAF record … Continue reading The Sisters Acton
A Negress in Stainforth’s Catalogue
My research partner, Dr. Kirstyn Leuner, understands that my initial interest in the Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing DH project was to recover the works of long forgotten women. Shortly after launching ourselves on this path, a narrower interest grew and I wanted to identify women of color in this 19th-century book collector’s holdings. Imagine … Continue reading A Negress in Stainforth’s Catalogue