Annotations

We implement a high-level note for each document using the description field of the Dublin Core metadata.

In the editions themselves, we include several types of annotations. We preface any additions made by Muse, or which are otherwise part of the original documents, with the label Authorial addition. To the extent possible, we locate these in the flow of the text in the transcription view where they appear on the written page, but in the reading view at times relocate them closer to the text to which they refer (see, for example, the note about Thomas Fortune's birth date and city in Thomas Fortune and James Weldon Johnson). These authorial annotations display at all times in all views, as they are part of the text itself.

We have also included contextual annotations of our own to explain specific aspects of the texts. We divide these into six categories: geographical, historical, biographical, lexical, genetic, and general. By genetic, we refer to notes that address the relationships between the documents in the collection or examine their connections to external writings or publications. We use general to describe interpretive notes that do not fit within any of the other categories. The contextual notes are visible only in the Reading Version. They are hidden by default, and can be displayed all at once or filtered by category. While we include geographical annotations in the documents themselves where appropriate, information related to specific places is available also when viewing locations in the map viewer.

When a given term needs to be annotated in more than one document, we include that note on our page of common annotations. Where appropriate, we include within the note links to the various documents in question.

We also include notes that explain matters pertinent to the translation of the text from the original document to the transcription. These are hidden by default, and can be displayed in the Transcription view only.