Livingstone Online (http://livingstoneonline.org/) is a peer-reviewed digital museum and library focused on the history of the British empire. The site uses the written and visual legacies of Victorian traveler David Livingstone (1813-1873) to engage ongoing debates about the creation of the colonial archive.
Livingstone Online argues that colonial documents (like those of Livingstone and others) should be read in their global and non-western local contexts, as the products of intercultural encounter, and the site seeks to recover and explore such additional histories.
The project also invites critical review of its own constructedness as a digital humanities endeavor by highlighting the complicated paths Livingstone’s words have taken from nineteenth-century manuscripts to the twenty-first-century web.
Together, Livingstone Online's materials make it an important resource for scholars working in areas such as Victorian literature, the British empire, African studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, travel writing, nineteenth-century global history, and much more. Scholars and other interested audiences are warmly invited to visit the site.
Adrian S. Wisnicki (University of Nebraska-Lincoln; awisnicki@yahoo.com) and Megan Ward (Oregon State University; megan.ward@oregonstate.edu) lead the work of Livingstone Online. The site is hosted by the University of Maryland Libraries.
Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Livingstone Online has recently completed several concurrent phases of long-term development (2013-2018). The site now:
* publishes an array of critical essays on the colonial archive, the history of nineteenth-century Africa, British imperial discourse, and Livingstone's manuscripts;
* offers open access to over 15,000 images of manuscripts and historical illustrations, 5,000 pages of critically-edited and encoded transcriptions, and 3000 metadata records (http://livingstoneonline.org/in-his-own-words/catalogue);
* includes digital humanities process narratives and hundreds of project documents that take users far behind the scenes of the research that has made the project possible.
Livingstone Online also includes a number of critical editions focused on specific manuscripts or collections of documents. A handful of the editions draw on state-of-the-art spectral imaging technology, an area where the Livingstone Online team has been recognized for its disciplinary leadership. The editions are as follows:
* Livingstone’s Manuscripts in South Africa (1843-1872): A Critical Edition. First edition, 2018. http://livingstoneonline.org/in-his-own-words/
* Livingstone's Final Manuscripts (1865-1873) – Diaries, Journals, Notebooks, and Maps: A Critical Edition. Beta edition, 2017. http://livingstoneonline.org/his-own-words/
* Livingstone’s 1870 Field Diary and Select 1870-1871 Manuscripts: A Multispectral Critical Edition. First edition, 2018. http://livingstoneonline.org/spectral-imaging/
* Livingstone’s 1871 Field Diary: A Multispectral Critical Edition.Updated version, 2017. http://livingstoneonline.org/spectral-imaging
* Livingstone’s Letter from Bambarre: A Multispectral Critical Edition. Updated version, 2017. http://livingstoneonline.org/spectral-imaging