OTAP News: Number:9

Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 09:49:18 -0800
Subject: Newsletter

Dear OTAP group,

It has been some time between newsletters from OTAP. I want to assure you that this does not mean that we are not hard at work. Let me summarize some of the recent highlights.

• We have published our first original text (published only as an OTAP web-text). This is the "Divan of Revani" initially edited by Mehmet Çavusoglu and finished after his death by Ali Tanyeri and Mehmet Kalpakli. The OTAP web edition was prepared by Walter Andrews and Stacy Waters. A note of historical interest: this text was the original project out of which OTAP and its related projects have developed. OTAP owes a great debt to the late Mehmet Çavusoglu and his prodigious scholarship.
• We have decided to archive our texts not only as Unicode documents but also as PDF or JPG documents to account for the fact that many of our users will have pre-OSX Macintoshes that will not accommodate Unicode. As the older models die out, this will no longer be necessary.
• We are reworking and updating our website in order to make it easier to navigate.
• Our Bilkent staff are working hard to produce new texts, of which we are now displaying samples on the website.
• We are working on adding Arabic script text to the web-edition of Mustafa Isen's tezkire sections from the Künhu'l-Ahbar and correcting the typographical errors in the text.
• We have a group from the U. W. Information School working on a project to develop a model for the Ottoman Historical Dictionary (OHD) databases and entry screens.
• We are also spending a great deal of time searching for funding.

Please remember: We are counting on you to provide us with texts and are willing to help you in any way we can to make the production of usable texts easy and rewarding for you. If you have transcribed texts, are working on transcribing a text, or planning to begin working on a text, feel free to contact us for advice about preparing texts for web-publication. You should also keep in mind that web publication does not mean that you cannot do hard-copy (print) publication also. In fact, a text formatted for web publication is also ready to print.

Please also feel free to contact us about questions or suggestions for our projects or website.

Our best wishes for the New Year and success in your scholarly endeavors,

For the OTAP staff,

Walter G. Andrews
OTEP/OTAP/OHD
Department of Near Eastern Languages
and Civilization
Box 353120
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
OTAP Website:
http://courses.washington.edu/otap/index.html
tel: 425-885-5525