Services
Documents Compass provides a variety of consultation and operations services for documentary editing projects. Each project is unique, and may require some or all of the services described here. We will prepare a customized proposal to respond to your needs.

Project planning: Documents Compass consults with editors of new projects to define scope, document collection strategies, editorial methods, and publication outcomes. We work with editors of print editions to make the transition to electronic publication. The choices made in the planning process have a critical impact on every subsequent step. We help editors develop an efficient strategy from the outset. Documents Compass enables projects to hit the ground running.

Funding and publishing guidance: Documents Compass assists projects in locating potential funders and writing grant proposals. We establish the capability of any project to create and develop an electronic edition. We work with editors to find publishers. Trust in a project’s ability to deliver its product is essential to funders and publishers. Documents Compass fills that need.

DTD development: Documents Compass will provide a variety of document type definitions to address a wide variety of issues and approaches. We provide the DTDs to projects in a simplified, understandable, and user-friendly way, relieving editors of the burden of learning the intricacies of XML encoding and/or the cost of hiring a programmer. Documents Compass helps editors shorten the time required for technical development and provides them with a structure that works within existing standards. .

Name Authority/Thesaurus management: Documents Compass will develop a name-authority system to distribute to participating projects in order to leverage their content within the larger publishing system. Projects will be able to employ the underlying and shared name authority system and a built-in taxonomic structure. Our goals include supporting interoperability across all content, giving project editors greater efficiency, enhancing collaboration and preparing content for future repurposing of materials.

Outsourcing consultation: Documents Compass maintains contacts and business relationships with outside vendors including offshore transcription and OCR services. We identify the need for vendors and assist project editors to find the best match for the expressed need of every editor, including foreign language translation and complex mathematical equations. Documents Compass saves project editors valuable time in helping them find solutions and sources.

Content Management: Documents Compass offers a web-based content management system (CMS) as one of the preferred options for housing the project’s digital content, workflow, digital scans, and documentation. This is an optimal setup for projects. Its advantages include allowing editors both to share material from anywhere in the world and to search through all of the project’s internally stored materials. Projects can determine access to the material according to their own criteria. All materials are backed up offsite.

Data Processing: Documents Compass can take on complete responsibility for the location, scanning, transcription, load to Content Management System, verification, tagging, proofing, indexing, name authority work, and other required data input and processing, leaving the scholarly annotation to the project editors.

User interface design: Every project has a unique set of data ancillary to the core documentary text including notes, commentary, biographical information, geographic identifiers, links to secondary sources, and blogs. Documents Compass assists projects in building a user interface. If this design is undertaken early in the project it can shape planning requirements and enhance the final outcome.

Database serving: Documents Compass provides ongoing database services.

Training on-site: Documents Compass provides hands-on training to project editors onsite. We train editors to work with new tools and systems, install software, identify problem areas, and solve digital work flow issues. Our task is to simplify the learning curve for the XML environment. This holds true both for previously published print projects reshaping their materials for electronic publication and for born-digital editions. Documents Compass sees one of its primary goals as helping projects adjust to novel methods and tools. The relatively modest learning curve involved in the adaptation of these methods and tools is a critical investment of time, energy, and resources.

Workshops, off-site: Documents Compass offers workshops on a variety of topics related to all areas of the documentary editing process. We expect editors to turn to us as a source for current information and best practices in the field.