The Technical Development and Expanding Scope of Melville's Marginalia Online

Abstract:Melville's Marginalia Online was created by the authors in 2006 with the goal of making evidence of Melville's reading broadly available to scholarship. Carrying on the work of Merton M. Sealts, Jr., and Wilson Walker Cowen, MMO maintains the documentary record of books Melville is known to have owned or borrowed and digitally edits his marginalia for open access by web users. Cross-disciplinary collaborations at the project have produced new digital tools for accessing and studying Melville's marginalia. In addition to introducing readers to MMO and its features, this article provides an overview of marginalia study in Melville criticism and explains how enhanced methods of inquiry present significant opportunities to assess and extend the work of earlier criticism on Melville. As its scope expands into areas of natural language processing and source study and as its technology is developed still further, MMO will provide scholars, students, and enthusiasts with the ability to identify the impact of Melville's reading on his own literary productions with new degrees of accuracy. Data informed scholarship, we believe, will build on the best Melville criticism of the past century and move Melville studies toward comprehensive and informed knowledge of his thought and writing.