Designing this digital object, our main goal was to represent as best we can the materiality of the book while implementing the benefits of an in-browser experience. We wanted as accurate an image as possible to attempt to remain true to the visual experience of reading the book as it is housed in the Special Collections Library.
This visually translates to minimal web-page clutter. We have given prominence to the image of the book, and we have employed animated transitions to replicate the turning of a page of a material book. We have also intentionally departed from traditional digital-edition navigation: whereas traditional navigation vivisects the book while allowing the reader to view multiple images on one scrollable page, Phantasmagoria and Other Poems is presented as one object that must be manipulated to view its individual pages. It occurs only once on the site. Whereas other digital editions present the material book in a way that is not physically possible without destroying the object, we paid careful attention to the book's material framing.
Nevertheless, we were determined to take advantage of the hypertextual browser: an online context facilitates overlaying and linking multiple elements of information. Our digital object is therefore the material produced by our readerly and editorial engagement with the object in the W.D. Jordan Special Collections Library.
Our foundational code for the website is Twitter Bootstrap, a coding toolkit (licensed under Apache License v2.0) that includes compiled CSS, compiled and minified CSS, and some compiled jQuery plugins. The book-navigation animation is supported by an additional JavaScript plugin (booklet.js), which provides book-like functionality for the individual images of Phantasmagoria. A Book2Net overhead scanner was used to image the object. Images were edited in the GIMP to correct colour, to rotate and crop images, and to resize the files.
The XML transcription is encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines. In digitizing the object, we followed as closely as possible the digitization guidelines of Internet Archive Canada, which is housed at the University of Toronto, (guidelines generously provided by Gabe Juszel). Our editorial framework follows the MLA Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions, but, because we engage with only a single object, much of the manuscript, collation, and versioning guidelines do not apply to this project. However, the MLA Guidelines have informed our desire to provide a “clear, convincing, and thorough” approach to digital scholarship.