Join the Primary Source Cooperative: How to Become a Member Edition
The Primary Source Cooperative at the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) looks forward to welcoming new editions on board, expanding the publication of primary source evidence with new content that can engage with the thousands of transcriptions—letters, diary entries, and other materials—already on the website. The content development and delivery systems particularly support publication for teams who need to make the leap from an analog process to best-practice digital publication. The same team that worked together to build the Coop—subject-matter experts, editors, scholars, archivists, and technologists—remains in place to assist new member editions.
The information below may help you determine if the Coop would be a good fit for your project. If you have decided to proceed with the application process, you may download the application form and complete it for submission. If you have further questions, you may contact the Coop staff at the MHS at primarysourcecoop@masshist.org.
Benefits of Publishing with the Primary Source Cooperative
All editions benefit from the following established strengths of the Coop:
- the shared content development and publication infrastructure, including an online tool to transform Word documents to XML files—as well as expert advice to resolve any errors;
- full access to the shared People and Subjects databases, populated with thousands of entries for individuals and historical topics, tagged in and searchable across current editions;
- an established, publicly available website that displays transcriptions and metadata for every document, as well as contextual data from the databases;
- a search function, with multiple faceting options, that gives the end-user results from across all editions;
- the preservation and sustainability provided by the Massachusetts Historical Society’s commitment to making primary source materials broadly and reliably accessible;
- digital humanities visualizations derived from each edition’s content and XML data and presented through the Lab Space interface by the Digital Scholarship Group (DSG) at Northeastern University;
- respect for edition-specific management of its own transcription and editorial policies, pre-publication workflows, and publication timing;
- engagement with a close cohort of editorial teams with overlapping content and research interests—especially for the long 19th century—as well as shared editorial practices and experience;
- and participation in the ongoing development of the Coop systems and purpose, including shaping updates as requested and agreed upon by the editorial teams in conversation with the MHS and DSG.
For new editions joining the Coop, support will include orientation and training in all aspects of the workflow with current editors and MHS staff. Training in the content generation systems particularly with an eye to creating and maintaining well-formed, valid XML, will be an essential part of every new edition’s entry into the Coop.
What to Know Before Starting the Application
Every member edition uses the Cooperative’s platform to manage its content and to publish each document to the Primary Source Cooperative website. Each edition also develops and manages its own web copy, using an editorial dashboard.
Long 19th century! At present, all member editions are aligned along a historical axis: the American long 19th century. Consequently, a priority in evaluating potential new members will be how that edition may join in, enhance, and complement the connections at work among the current member editions.
Because the Coop is a collaborative editorial endeavor with a shared publication platform and set of related technologies, it is important for member editions to participate in the systems (administrative and technological) already in use and to engage in the decision-making and process of updating those systems as needed.
Baseline Expectation for Member Editions
In order to have their content published on the shared Primary Source Cooperative website, all member editions must meet the baseline expectations of the publication platform. Therefore, it is necessary that each member edition will
- agree to incorporate name and subject encoding in their project;
- agree to participate in Coop meetings and decisions to help reach consensus on issues and updates (ca. 5 hrs/month), with one editor to serve on the governing board;
- use XML for the finalized historical content of the edition and agree to follow the XML encoding guidelines established by the Coop;
- recognize the importance of the website’s shared visual and textual conventions (the “look and feel”) while developing contextual copy about the edition, and agree to follow the usage guidelines established by the Coop to create consistency across the site’s web copy.
Although the technology stack of the content management and publication system is maintained by the MHS, the Coop is a collaborative self-publishing process. Each edition publishes its own materials; all editions work together to maintain the Coop’s publication standards. Because the MHS is built on the quality of collections and operations the Coop, by extension, is committed to publishing only those materials that achieve a high standard of reliability, editorial convention, and presentation. This shared responsibility also involves investing in the governance work of the Coop and working with the MHS to report issues, update metadata, and share files as needed for general updates and maintenance.
What the Host Institutions Provide
The MHS hosts the main publication platform for the digital editions and also serves as the central administrator for communication among the editorial teams that create and maintain each edition’s content. The Digital Scholarship Group at Northeastern University hosts Lab Space, a website that gives users access to analytical visualizations of the networks of people referenced in the transcriptions and timelines for the historical topics mentioned.
The Review Process
The application provides space for essential information about your edition, as well as more robust descriptions of the plan for your edition’s content, workflow, principles, and goals. The review team will comprise editors from the current editions and MHS staff; they will assess applications for a good fit between the proposed edition and the goals and systems of the Coop. We may also seek external comment from qualified subject or technical experts.
Submission
If you require an alternative format, or have other questions about preparing and submitting the application, please contact oleblanc@masshist.org.
- Download a copy of the fillable PDF.
- Before submitting, be sure to rename the file to reflect your edition (e.g., PSC-application-SmithJonesPapers).
- Send the PDF to oleblanc@masshist.org.