by the SOF Data Preservation Committee
Kathryn Sharpe, DPC chair, received the following question from Sylvia Holmes, secretary of the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable (SAR) and leader of By the Book, SAR’s book club.
Q: I just started interacting with SOAR (Shakespeare Online Authorship Research). . . I have many, many boxes of stuff. I randomly pulled out. . .an article called “Study says stargazer wrote Shakespeare’s plays,” which was published in the Sunday Record, Nov. 22, 1998. I checked, and the article was not in SOAR. Now that I have something SOAR may want, what should I do with this article and any future articles? How do I submit them to SOAR? Is there a weeding out process for articles they don’t want?
A: New England Shakespeare Oxford Library (NESOL) maintains a permanent file of
miscellaneous authorship articles and clippings that are in a queue to be downloaded to
SOAR. All original articles sent to NESOL are welcome and will be added to the library’s
permanent file of authorship articles. If you’ve been hanging onto an article for a while, here’s
how to ensure it will be preserved in the archives:
- First, check SOAR to see if the article is already archived. If so, then the
article has been preserved for future generations, and you can safely recycle your copy. - If the article is NOT in SOAR, we want it. Please scan the article and send an email copy
to Bill Boyle at librarian@shakespeareoxfordlibrary.org (see scanning guidelines below). - In addition, please mail the original hard copy of the article to:
NESOL, Attn. Bill Boyle
PO Box 263
Somerville, MA 02143
SOAR SCANNING GUIDELINES
- PDF format for all typed and printed text
- JPG format for all photos, drawings, or documents in need of editing or cleaning
- Best resolution at 300 dpi; higher resolution reserved for special cases
- Brightness at 50%
- All pages straight and aligned
- One file per document; one folder per author
Have a question for the DPC? Send questions to Kathryn at sharpe.kathryn@gmail.com.
