First Folios Compared: A Closer Look at the Collection and Navigation

Sponsored by AM

Recorded on 08/16/2023
Posted in The Authority File

Episode 342

In the second episode of this four-part series, Claudine Nightingale, Publisher, and Ana Attrill-Klein, Quartex Product Specialist, both of AM, offer a closer look at AM’s First Folios Compared, an open access collection of more than 40 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Our guests explain the logistics behind the project’s digitization requirement and highlight the time and effort the digitization process demands. They also describe the variation between the institutions’ copies, from practically pristine to missing several comedies, and how that disparity offers exciting insights for research. Last, our guests chat about how the Folios are accessed on the platform, strategies for searching the site—by metadata, static content, and full text recognition—and the platform’s unique way of denoting the pages by signature marks.

About the guests:

Claudine Nightingale headshot

Claudine Nightingale
Publisher
AM

Claudine Nightingale is a Publisher at AM. Based in the Editorial Development management team, she has particular responsibility for guiding editorial strategy on theatre, literature, arts and culture content, as well as guiding the company’s audio and AV content strategy. Before moving to AM in 2014, Claudine was Editor of Teaching Drama and Early Music Today magazines, and Head of Directories at Rhinegold Publishing. Earlier in her career, she worked at an independent book publisher in an editorial and rights sales capacity. She has also worked as a freelance editor, journalist and reviewer for a range of arts publications and websites.

Ana Attrill-Klein headshot

Ana Attrill-Klein
Quartex Product Specialist
AM

Ana Attrill-Klein is a Product Specialist for AM’s digital collections platform, Quartex. She has five years’ experience in libraries and archives, alongside an MSc in Information Management. As a qualified librarian, it’s her mission to ease the technological pain points of library and archive practitioners so that users can connect to primary sources easier than ever before.

Enjoy the conversation? Listen to the rest of the series:

Check out our previous series with AM:
– The Impact of Primary Sources on Lesbian Literature and History
– Primary Source Literacy

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