Jennifer Stertzer

The Center for Digital Editing (CDE) was established at the University of Virginia in 2016 after several years of experimenting with and developing digital tools and publishing solutions at the Papers of George Washington project. Conceptualising and building the CDE involved several components: deliberating on the outcomes of the trials, explorations and advancements of digital tools and projects made over the years at the Washington Papers; assessing the state of the field of documentary editing; exploring the potential of collaboration and shared resources/expertise; thinking about how editorial projects engage with their users; experimenting with tools and platforms; and exploring the intersection between documentary editing and digital humanities.

From the outset, collaboration has been at the heart of our mission. The landscape of documentary editing is changing, with smaller, shorter-term projects increasingly replacing large, long-term endeavours. Primarily due to funding availability and evolving requirements, such as open-access digital publication and extensive public outreach, this shift has inspired us to embrace a new collaboration model that leverages various partners’ strengths to maximise funding and enhance efficiency. I’ve witnessed firsthand how these partnerships not only create immediate benefits but also build a reservoir of technical and editorial expertise that we can draw upon for future initiatives.

However, the path of collaboration is not always smooth. Each project brings its own unique set of challenges, which we can categorise as institutional and disciplinary. Navigating these differences has not always been easy; we’ve faced setbacks and ‘failures’ that, while frustrating, have often transformed into profound learning experiences. Each hurdle has provided insights that enrich our understanding and refine our processes.

At the organisational level, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of coordination and cooperation among institutions. Since most of our work is grant-funded, administering projects – preparing proposals, developing and managing budgets, implementing work and reporting on progress – consumes quite a bit of time. Over time, we’ve sought to streamline these administrative processes, developing standardised procedures and fostering robust communication channels. This intentionality has made our collaborations more productive and less cumbersome. Yet, institutional support for digital projects can vary widely. Some partners have access to robust internal support, while others rely heavily on the CDE for essential services. Developing standardised procedures for proposal and budget development and clear timelines and workflows have helped. Additionally, fostering strong communication channels between institutions can help manage expectations and responsibilities.

Institutional support of editing and publishing technologies also varies. Some of our partner projects receive internal support, such as site hosting, platform installation and maintenance. Others need the CDE to provide some or all of those services. This reality is one of the reasons we have pursued the development of a Drupal-based editorial and publication platform. Working in a platform that provides out-of-the-box functionality (technical infrastructure, editing tools, content displays, pre-built search/browse/query options) and supports project-specific features helps ensure a predictable and efficient implementation. In turn, technical maintenance and updating have become more manageable and less time-consuming. It’s been rewarding to see how this platform has enabled projects to thrive without the burden of excessive technical challenges.

Hosting, or ‘publishing’, content raises sustainability and institutional responsibility issues. In the realm of digital projects, planning for long-term preservation and access is paramount. Unlike print editions that find a permanent home on library shelves, digital materials require ongoing commitment and strategic planning. We have worked with projects and their host institutions to develop preservation strategies; for example, the Pinckney Papers Projects at the University of South Carolina, in collaboration with the South Caroliniana Library, devised a plan to preserve the project’s research and source materials (USC, ‘Pinckney Papers Projects’ and ‘South Caroliniana Library’). I had the opportunity to sit in on these meetings and experience how these relationships are cultivated.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we’ve participated in other project meetings where the editors are incredibly wary of external support and solutions. These concerns revolve mainly around who ultimately ‘owns’ the project and its content. Our experiences have led us to create options, including pathways for preserving and archiving content and linking our projects to established repositories like LibraData and Rotunda (University of Virginia, ‘LibraData’ and ‘About Rotunda’).¹ Crafting a clear preservation and sustainability plan, utilising established pipelines and digital repositories, and adopting protocols for regular updates and backups are essential in ensuring that the work we do remains accessible for generations to come.

Working collaboratively also involves bridging various disciplinary, linguistic or operational gaps. Like the challenges and outcomes of navigating institutional support, interdisciplinary collaborations are both complicated and immensely rewarding. We have been fortunate to work with various practitioners, including editors, archivists, community activists, documentary filmmakers, digital humanists, public historians and curators. However, with this diversity come different methods, vocabularies and project management strategies. These collaborations require intentional communication, active listening and a willingness to adapt. I’ve learned that fostering a cooperative environment requires patience and a genuine openness to different perspectives. It’s in these spaces that innovation flourishes. However, I’ve also witnessed how different terminologies can create barriers to understanding and alignment. Despite our shared mission of making content accessible, variations in language across disciplines can lead to confusion. We’ve encountered practitioners who struggle to find their work reflected in grant guidelines that seem rigid and exclusionary. Two projects in particular come to mind: the Chinese American WWII Veterans Digital Resource and Archive and the Yokohama Specie Bank Collaborative Digital Edition project.

The Chinese American WWII Veterans Digital Resource and Archive project grew out of a book – Honor and Duty: The Chinese American WWII Veterans – and a documentary film project – Honor and Duty: The Mississippi Delta Chinese – developed, written and directed by E. Samantha Cheng of Heritage Series, LLC.² The project aims to create the first digital resource and archive of public and private records acknowledging Chinese and Chinese American veterans of World War II. The CDE partnered with Cheng and her team in 2020 to help conceptualise and plan the digital project and develop a grant proposal to support that work. Since this project was built on previous endeavours, workflow and research processes were already in place.

The project team also had a solid understanding of how the data they collected could be used and displayed in the digital resource. These ideas pushed the boundaries of our ideas about data and presentation, which were primarily driven by traditional workflows and processes. The challenge was figuring out how to map the project’s workflow, data structuring and publication goals to grant guidelines that required detailed descriptions of editorial methodologies (defined by traditional editing activities like cataloguing, transcribing and annotating). We initially experimented with mapping a project’s practices, methods and desired outcomes to the terminology used in grant guidelines. The process was tedious and, to be honest, sometimes detrimental; instead of spending time and energy advancing work, we were talking past each other in an attempt to contort the work to better align with the guidelines. Stepping back and regrouping, we refocused on the underlying goals and processes rather than specific terminology. We drafted a proposal explaining these in detail, using language that fully represents the project.

We also had to figure out how to match the project’s data, research work and interface ideas to components of our technical infrastructure. Further complicating the matter was the platform itself; the primary building blocks of a Drupal site – content types, views, blocks, themes, and so on – are not easy to understand. While every project element is reflected in the platform, articulating those connections and relationships is not always easy. We failed more times than I’d like to admit at explaining and demonstrating how the project team worked and envisioned the resource could – and did – map to the data model and content views. And while I think we were ultimately successful, the experience was fraught with frustration and exasperation.

The Yokohama Specie Bank Collaborative Digital Edition at the Japanese Cultural Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) in San Francisco is working to develop and make accessible documents and financial records drawn primarily from the Bank’s collection. During the project’s planning phase, I was invited to participate and help the team think about digital editing and platforms. We confronted two challenges from the start: how to create processes and tools that could involve community members in every phase of the work and what technical solutions were feasible for the JCCCNC to engage with, manage and sustain. Some team members felt that the CDE’s (and, more generally, the field’s) methods and tools were too scholarly, complex and inaccessible. We made several attempts at mitigating these concerns, from demonstrating the technology’s ease of use to, again, trying to map and connect different terminologies. However, these efforts ultimately failed; the project team and the JCCCNC decided they needed to organically create methods and solutions that reflected their values and skills.

Despite this failure, we respected their decision and learned from the process. In working with other community-driven projects, we now avoid unsolicited problem-solving and instead help identify specific, appropriate areas for support. We also feel that more space needs to be made for these projects; while their methods, tools and source materials might differ, the work is no less critical. Experiences like this continue to inform another one of our projects – eLaboratories. ELabs is a ‘diverse community of practitioners engaged in making source materials accessible, discoverable, or (re)imaginable’ (CDE, ‘eLaboratories’). Conceptualising and growing eLabs has allowed us to work with various projects and practitioners, who, in turn, have shared their work with the community (Matsuda 2019). We developed eLabs to be an open ecosystem where ‘practices of editing and recovery span numerous communities and disciplines … a space for cross-fertilization, co-creation, and collaboration—a place where all practitioners are encouraged to grow by listening to and learning from each other’ (CDE, ‘About eLabs’). This ethos also aligns with the CDE’s mission and is very much influenced by our collaborative successes and failures.

Not every collaborative effort reaches its intended outcome, but each experience is a chance for growth. Reflecting on what worked and what didn’t is vital for shaping future endeavours. By documenting lessons learned and engaging in post-project evaluations, we’ve honed our ability to be better partners. Sharing the knowledge and tools we develop along the way has the potential to amplify our collective impact. As I look ahead, I’m reminded that the landscape of documentary editing and digital humanities is ever evolving. Embracing flexibility, open communication and an iterative mindset can transform challenges into opportunities. By centring our work on shared goals and adapting to the unique needs of each project, we can cultivate partnerships that advance our field and enhance access to primary source materials. It’s an exciting time to be part of this dynamic community, and I’m eager to see where our collaborative spirit will take us next.