About This Site: Overview

Blyde River Canyon, South Africa, 2013. Copyright Angela Aliff. CC BY-NC 3.0

Cite page (MLA): "About This Site: Overview." Livingstone Online. Adrian S. Wisnicki and Megan Ward, dirs. University of Maryland Libraries, 2018. Web. http://livingstoneonline.org/uuid/node/b49b7671-f0d6-47e9-8826-f97b878a6831.


The "About This Site" section of Livingstone Online describes some of the key elements of this site, including our goals, mission, and staff. The section also includes a set of essays detailing the history of Livingstone Online and outlines the significance of Livingstone's manuscripts, efforts by scholars to document these manuscripts, and our site's potential audiences. The guide below describes each of the pages in this part of the site.

Section Guide    Top

Livingstone Online: An Introduction - introduces Livingstone Online by describing the site's goals, content, and practices. The section also outlines the site's educational value for modern audiences.

One More Voice: An Introduction - introduces One More Voice, a Livingstone Online imprint project that focuses on recovering non-European contributions from nineteenth-century British imperial and colonial archives.

Livingstone's Manuscripts in the Digital Age - traces the history of documenting and assembling Livingstone surviving manuscripts through the Livingstone Documentation Project (1973-85), followed by the ongoing efforts of Livingstone Online (2004-present) to bring digital editions of these manuscripts to a global audience.

The Theory Behind Livingstone Online - sets out Livingstone Online's theoretical objectives. We cite our attempts to represent Livingstone's legacy in a reflective and critically-informed manner, and we discuss the challenges inherent in working with colonial source materials. The essay concludes by outlining our efforts to conduct our research in a transparent manner that invites critical interrogation and debate.

The Design of Livingstone Online - provides an overview of the Livingstone Online site design. The essay outlines the key components of the site, the site’s aesthetic objectives, and the collaborative process that led to the development of the site.

Why Should We Read Livingstone’s Manuscripts? - outlines Livingstone's importance as an imperial travel writer, the topics that he covers in his writings, the geographical extent of his travels, the potential of his manuscripts to inform research in many disciplines, and the overall importance of Livingstone's manuscripts for understanding both nineteenth-century and contemporary global events.

Reading Exploration Through the Digital Library - outlines the significance of Livingstone Online as a digital library; using examples from the site, examines the importance of the digital library in continuing the deconstruction of persistent, individual-centered histories of nineteenth-century exploration in Africa; and explores the implications of such work for the rediscovery of lost, silenced, or muted narratives in the historical record.

Who is Livingstone Online's Audience? - describes the different intended audiences of Livingstone Online.

A Brief History of Livingstone Online (2004-2013) - explores the origins of Livingstone Online, describes the goals and achievements of the project's first phase (2004-2006), considers how these goals changed as the site grew and gained more collaborators during its second phase (2007-2009), and, finally, outlines how Livingstone Online expanded into an international project while embracing advanced imaging technology for the study of Livingstone's manuscripts (2010-2013).

LEAP (2013-2017): A Project History, part I and part II - details the history of LEAP: The Livingstone Online Enrichment and Access Project, the initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that resulted in the development of the present Livingstone Online site and our critical edition of Livingstone's Final Manuscripts (1865-73). The essay combines text, images, and access to downloadable project documents to provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes look into the project.

Livingstone Online Site Guide - provides a skeletal outline of the entire Livingstone Online site. The section enumerates all the main sections and subsections of the site and provides links to all core site data, documentation, and outreach materials.

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