The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce the beta release of the New Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (SDBM). Thanks to support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New SDBM is being redeveloped to allow you—the members of our user community—to help us build a finding aid for the world’s manuscripts.
Members of our user community can now sign up to contribute data, including your own personal observations of a manuscript or group of manuscripts, and to engage with other users to facilitate research and conversations about current and historical locations of manuscripts and the data gathered in the process of recording this history.
The final release of the New SDBM is scheduled for April 2017. In the meantime, we invite you to sign up now at https://sdbm.library.upenn.edu to start contributing and testing new features and functionality. Your participation and feedback will help us build a better tool for your research.
New features currently available:
• New data model
• Enhanced provenance data
• Ability to enter and manage your own contributions, track your search history, bookmark, tag, and download search results
• Export the entire contents of the SDBM for your own use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License
• A growing VIAF-based Name Authority for individuals and institutions associated with manuscript production and trade to which users can contribute
• Google group for User feedback and discussion: new-sdbm-feedback-phase 2.
New features coming soon:
• Public approval system for Entries, Manuscript Records, and Names
• Group activity workspace for collaborative projects
• Ability to advance from Contributor to Editor and Super-Editor via a user community approval system
• More refined and user-friendly interface
For more information, go to https://sdbm.library.upenn.edu or email us at sdbm@pobox.upenn.edu.
