Small databases

I am SO sorry, I didn’t realize I had left this as a draft all week!

The resource(s) I chose to examine are letters written by Victorian lady travelers throughout their travels in the American West, going along with the theme from my previous post. While the resources I have used in the past were books of published letters, I believe the common themes of letters both published and unpublished (and indeed even a comparison between the published and unpublished versions) would benefit from organization in a database. Some examples of similar digitization projects include: the Victorian Women Writers’ Letters Project at Simon Fraser University; The Emma Crosby Letters at the University of British Columbia; and the Dolly Madison Digital Edition at the University of Virginia. These three databases provide access to the full text of women’s letters (not all from the period I am specifically interested in) and allow for searching and browsing on multiple facets such as writer, recipient/addressee, dates, and places.

This diagram represents the different relationships existing between writer and addressee and the topics such letters could cover. Having tables for different dates, places, and themes would make it easy to organize research dealing with these particular issues.