The records were given to the Charles Babbage Institute by John Unsworth, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia (IATH), in May 2002.
Access to the collection is unrestricted.
The Charles Babbage Institute does not hold the copyright to the materials in the collection. Researchers may quote from the collection under the fair use provisions of the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).
The William Blake Archive Project Records, (CBI 174), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
The materials in this collection are arranged into the following groups:
The William Blake Archive Project was proposed in 1993 by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH), a humanities computing research center located at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, as an experiment in hypermedia scholarly communication. A collaboration was formed between the IATH, directed by John Unsworth, and three noted Blake experts, the latter of whom also serve as the editors of the William Blake Archive Web site: Morris Eaves, University of Rochester; Robert Essick, University of California, Riverside; and Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The William Blake Archive Project, as a pioneer in the area of electronic scholarship, represents one of the earliest and most influential examples of electronic scholarship, establishing standards for electronic editing, site construction, and digital reproduction, serving as the model for subsequent projects.
The William Blake Archive Project Web site (
Project participants met annually at “Blake Camp.” All other project-related communication of this intensive scholarly collaboration was conducted via email.
The William Blake Archive Project has been sponsored by the Library of Congress and supported by a variety of institutions including the Getty Grant Program, Essick Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities (Preservation and Access Grant), Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Sun Microsystems and Inso Corporation.
Project participants consisted of Director John Unsworth, University of Virginia; Editors Morris Eaves, University of Rochester; Robert Essick, University of California, Riverside; and Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Technical Editors Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland, College Park; and Andrea Laue, University of Virginia; and Project Manager Andrea Dickens, University of Virginia. An advisory board is composed of thirteen scholars from various American academic institutions such as Columbia University, Loyola University, University of California, University of Virginia, as well as British institutions such as University College London, the British Museum, London and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
The William Blake Archive Project Records consist of meticulously preserved materials which reflect the Project’s entire development from its inception in 1995 to the time the records were given to CBI in 2002. These records include grant proposals, meeting minutes, project participants’ email correspondence, the public “Blake update” message board, screen captures from the 1995 HTML demo forward, user comments, and technical materials documenting the development of the Blake Archive Document Type Definition. All electronic records have been printed onto paper.
The Blake Camp records consist of agendas and meeting minutes of these annual meetings from 1997 to 2002. Information includes subjects discussed at the meetings as well as various decisions made about Project details.
Grant Applications include grant application materials consisting of detailed information about the Project for three proposals to the following organizations: National Endowment for the Humanities (Preservation and Access Grant), Getty Grant program and the Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art.
“Updates on the William Blake Archive” consists of printed copies of Project Web site newsletters which give users a detailed progress report about the William Blake Archive Web site, such as new texts and visual items most recently available or forthcoming on the Web site, as well as information about funding and updates to other portions of the Web site. These newsletters appeared four to six times annually.
The bulk of the collection is comprised of the blake-proj messages (entire contents of Boxes 1-3, and Box 4, folders 1-17, Box 5, folders 7-12, Box 6, folders 1-9) that consist of the email correspondence between various collaborators of the Project from 1997 to 2002 which provides a detailed documentation of the development and daily operation of the project. “About the Archive” reflects the name of a part of the Web site which includes contents of eleven separate Web site links containing documentation and supplementary information about various aspects of the William Blake Archive. Folder names reflect the separate respective link names.
Screen Captures includes full-color print-outs of four samples of image captures from the Web site in assorted versions.
Blake Archive Description (BAD) Files include print-outs of samples of three encoded Blake texts from the Web site: The Book of Thel, The Book of Urizen and Visions of the Daughters of Albion. These project-specific DTDs are used to encode William Blake’s works as physical artifacts at the object and collection level.
User Comments consists of a very small sampling of Web site user email comments and suggestions about the Web site sent in 1996 and from 1999 to 2002.
Paper and Articles about the Archive include articles written predominantly by editors and staff members of the William Blake Archive Project for publication in journals about various aspects of the Project. consist of four print-outs in one folder of encoded description describing the proposed encoding terms and consistent structure of the documents to be included in the Web site. These documents reflect modifications to portions of the Web site between 1997-1999.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.