Site User Guide

Note: The Lili Elbe Digital Archive works best in the following desktop browsers: Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Increasing the width of your window and using a large monitor are recommended for the collation studio and reading views. If the fonts are too small, adjust the zoom scale on your browser. Our goal is to make this site mobile compatible in the near future but for now it works best on a desktop.

We have run initial accessibility tests on fonts and color schemes and are making a continuing effort to develop this site according to web accessibility standards largely by utilizing the Bootstrap CSS framework.

Menus: The four main sections of the site (About, Narrative, Context, and Commentary) each has a menu on the left-hand side of its respective page. When you land on that page, you can select specific content from the menu options. On this Site provides a general overview of what can be found in each main section, but you will need to visit each section for a complete listing.

Primary Documents:

As an archive representing primary materials, this site contains digital facsimiles of original documents. But as a digital website with documents in multiple languages, each document is also transcribed, translated into English, and encoded to facilitate analysis and searching. Due to copyright concerns, the original editions of this narrative are available as page scans linked to the HTML versions, not as full text versions in an e-reader format.

The main editions of this narrative (the Corpus) are available as transcribed, encoded, and collated HTML documents, with images of the original editions linked with corresponding pages in the Collation Studio and eventually in the reading views as well. Mousing over a person or place name in the HTML documents will reveal the key ID. All identifiable persons and places in the narrative can be found in the Glossary and in the Prosopography data. The HTML documents contain the illustrations embedded within the narrative where they appear in the original editions.

The Collation Studio allows users to compare passages in A1 across other editions. Selecting a paragraph in A1 will highlight the corresponding paragraphs in the other editions and translations (B1, D1, D1-TR, G1, TS, TS-TR–see key below). Scroll down each edition until the highlighted passage appears. We have indicated with a special character [❡] instances where text appears in another edition but not in A1; mousing over the special character highlights that paragraph or paragraphs in the other edition or editions. Pages are linked to page images of the original documents. Users can open as many editions as they like by selecting them from the dropdown menu on the left-hand side. Please note that A1 is the base text; all other editions are collated with A1, not with one another.

Reading Views:

At the top of each document we have included the document’s metadata and a brief style guide. The following is a guide to our styling.

Page numbers appear in the left-hand margin when the paragraph begins on a new page; when a paragraph spans two pages, page numbers appear in brackets inline with the text.

For editions, clicking on the page numbers reveals the digital facsimile of the original page. Archival materials are also linked to the originals at the page level.

PersNames with key IDs are bolded in blue, placeNames in red.

Corrections of original wording or spelling are indicated with bold type and red underlining; the original wording or spelling is in the text and the correction appears upon mouse over. Punctuation errors, however, are corrected in the text and the error is revealed upon mouse over.

Editor and translator notes, with the initials of the person making the comment, are indicated with the @ symbol and revealed upon mouse over.

Diary entries are marked in red. Letters are marked in green.

Text added in another hand is underlined in red and revealed on mouse over.

For editions, original and translations are displayed as separate documents. For contextual materials, such as letters and articles, translations are displayed with the transcriptions in a two-column format.

Key to the editions:

  • American edition (A1)
  • British edition (B1)
  • Danish edition (D1)
  • English translation of the Danish edition (D1-TR)
  • German edition (G1)
  • German typescript (TS)
  • English translation of the typescript (TS-TR)

Note: Some of our documentation uses TR1 for D1-TR because in earlier stages of the project we had only the Danish translation. We have since added the translation of the German typescript.

Key to the collation:

Paragraphs are numbered by edition and chapter:

Edition/chapter/paragraph: e.g., a1c01p01 = A1, chapter 1, paragraph 1

Diary entries are numbered separately and identified as follows:

Edition/chapter/diary entry/paragraph: e.g., a1c10d01p01 = A1, chapter 10, diary entry 1, paragraph 1

Letters are numbered separately and identified as follows:

Edition/chapter/letter heading(s) or paragraphs or footer(s):
e.g., a1c10l02ha = A1, chapter 10, letter 2, first header
e.g., a1c10l02p01 = A1, chapter 10, letter 2, paragraph 1
e.g., a1c10l02fa = A1, chapter 10, letter 2, first footer.

Here is an example:

a1c10l02ha Berlin,
a1c10l02hb “14th March, 1930
a1c10l02hc “Dear Christian,
a1c10l02p01 “It is now Lili who is writing to you …
a1c10l02fa Your Lili

Note: Chapters may exceed 99 paragraphs and thus we number paragraphs p001, while no diary entry or letter has that many paragraphs so we number those paragraphs as p01.

We will add a COLLEX search function soon.