The St Francis Xavier University Digital Humanities Centre cordially invites you to a free public virtual lecture: "The development of GEMMS (Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons), a relational bibliographic database: or is it?" by Jennifer Farooq (University of Regina) and Brent Nelson (University of Saskatchewan)
7 April 2022, 4pm Atlantic time. Free and open to the public. Registration here: http://www.bit.ly/GEMMS_StFX
Abstract: Jennifer Farooq (University of Regina) and Brent Nelson (University of Saskatchewan) will explore the development of GEMMS (Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons), which is a group-sourced, online, bibliographic database of early modern (1530-1715) manuscript sermons from the UK, Ireland and North America. GEMMS is freely accessible (https://gemmsorig.usask.ca/) and currently contains records of over 20,000 sermons and sermon notes from more than 70 libraries and archives. They will discuss the history and scope of GEMMS and the human logistics for the project. They also will analyze the technical development of the GEMMS database and the transfer of GEMMS from a bespoke relational database to Drupal, which is not a database at all. The transition to Drupal will improve the functionality and the long-term viability of GEMMS, but the transfer involved a number of compromises and challenges as well.