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13 January 1999

The editors of the William Blake Archive are pleased to announce the opening of a major new wing of the site, devoted to documentation and supplementary materials "About the Archive." Available as the first entry on our main table of contents page, the "About the Archive" materials consist of:

A brief overview of the Archive for first-time or hurried users, entitled The Archive at a Glance;
A statement of Editorial Principles and Methodology;
A Technical Summary of the Archive's design and implementation;
A Frequently Asked Questions list;
A reference page listing articles by members of the project team, as well as reviews and notices of the Archive by others;
An updated and expanded version of the article-length Plan of the Archive, providing additional detail about our intentions with regard to Blake's non-illuminated works.

Also included is information about the editors, an account of the Archive's collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and a link to our extensive Help documentation. In addition, we will shortly be adding a Tour of the Archive to these materials (combining textual narration, graphical screenshots, and suggestions as to how to use the Archive). We will announce the Tour in a separate update when it is available.

We would also like to take this opportunity to announce the Archive's recently convened Advisory Board and to thank those who have agreed to serve:

Ann Bermingham
Professor of the History of Art and Architecture
University of California, Santa Barbara
David Bindman
Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art
University College London
Frances Carey
Deputy Keeper, Department of Prints and Drawings
British Museum, London
Ruth Fine
Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Nelson Hilton
Professor of English
University of Georgia
Steven Jones
Associate Professor of English
Loyola University, Chicago
Karl Kroeber
Mellon Professor of the Humanities
Columbia University

Alan Liu
Professor of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
Jerome McGann
John Stewart Bryan University Professor of English
University of Virginia
Morton D. Paley
Professor in the Graduate School (English)
University of California, Berkeley
Daniel Pitti
Project Director
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
University of Virginia
Duncan Robinson
Director
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England
G. Thomas Tanselle
Vice-President
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
John Unsworth
Director
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
University of Virginia

We have an ambitious publication schedule planned for the spring, focused on adding additional copies of the illuminated works already available in the Archive. In the immediate future we plan to publish the Songs of Innocence and of Experience (copies C, F, and L) and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (copies C and F), followed by multiple copies of The Book of Urizen, America: A Prophecy, and Europe: A Prophecy, The Book of Thel, and Visions of the Daughters of Albion as well as further copies of the separate and combined Songs and the Marriage. We hope to follow these works with Jerusalem copy E by the summer, thus completing the illuminated canon. This spring we will also be releasing the electronic Erdman edition in beta form and publishing detailed lists documenting the complete contents of the various U.S. and U.K. Blake collections (now nine of them) contributing works to the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi

The Book of Urizen, copy G, plate 5, Library of Congress

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