After over two years of work on three continents, much of it completed during a global pandemic, I am pleased to announce that the redesigned Mill Marginalia Online is now up and running.
The differences from a user’s perspective are subtle: a single button now allows anyone to download the project’s full metadata to date, rather than having to do so one book at a time; and critical introductions are now grouped together and accessible via button on the Home screen rather than pinned directly to their specifically associated Volume pages.
Behind the scenes, however, almost everything has changed. Newly rebuilt in WordPress, MMO no longer requires a resident code ninja to update and maintain, which fact has finally allowed the data set to return to growth.
The new site features a fresh 8000+ examples of marginalia, representing almost the entirety of Mill’s extensive Classics collection. There is also a new multi-part critical introduction to George Grote’s History of Greece, which is perhaps the most extensively annotated title in Somerville’s Mill Library. The now-26,000+ marks and annotations represent the roughly one-half of the total books remaining from Mill’s Blackheath library.
And there’s more on the way! Mill’s English books of literature, history, botany, and other subjects are currently being processed. Stay tuned to learn when you’ll be able to review on-the-page responses to Boswell, Bulwer-Lytton, Butler, Byron, and that’s just the B’s.
Albert D. Pionke, Project Director