25 Jul 2016: Women's Travel Writing 2.0 - What's New?
Users returning to this database after a few weeks away will find a number of new features thanks to our database designer, Chris Veness of Moveable Type Ltd., whose work is part of the current and on-going British Academy funded project, Women's Travel Writing, 1780-1840: Communities of Authorship.
First off is a refreshed home page under a familiar but shorter title, Women's Travel Writing, 1780-1840. The most significant new feature here is a drop-down navigation bar (available on every page) which allows users to move between the Home page, Search page, Browse page, News & Events, and About page.
The Search page now has been augmented to allow searches to be limited or combined in different ways. We've added an author-role feature to allow users to search for specific roles, such as editor or translator, or for role combinations. We've also added a place of publication drop down menu (Published in ...), as well as the new categories of 'gender' and 'original language'. In the coming months, these two categories will become even more important as we systematically add books translated by women to the dataset.
The Browse page is brand new as is News & Events on which the current post appears. The Browse page gives added visibility to the writers and their roles, as well as to illustrators, publishers and printers. News & Events does what is said on the tin, and also allows posts to be shared on social media via Twitter and Facebook. The About page, meanwhile, has also been refreshed and brought up to date.
Less visible is a link - ([see updates]) - which users will find in the lower left corner of text and author display pages that have been updated since the database was first launched in July 2014. The link will take you to an Updates page showing the chronological development of the entry up to the present, and may be of interest to those who have cited material in the past that no longer appears as they remember it.
As always, feedback is appreciated. If you have comments on the database, or suggestions, please email Benjamin Colbert: B.Colbert@wlv.ac.uk.