Introduction

In July 2023, the edition humboldt digital is available in its ninth installment (ehd, v. 9). Since the release of its beta version in September 2016, ehd has been continuously supplemented with new texts from the project’s corpus (travel journals, topics, and letters). In addition, a cross-linked research dataset of chronology and index data is being created, expanding with each version of the edition.

Visualizations

Version 9 (July 2023)

Travel Journals

• Index général de mes MSS [1805] [= American Travel Journal, Vol. V, pp. 37r–49v], edited by Carmen Götz
• Research paper by Carmen Götz on the first edition of the Index général
• Research paper by Ferdinand Damaschun on the Russian-Siberian Travel Journal from 1829

Topics

• Correspondence with Joseph Dalton Hooker (4 letters), edited by Sabine Seifert (Scientific Travels)
• Correspondence with Dietrich Ludwig Gustav Karsten (2 letters), edited by Cettina Rapisarda and Christian Thomas (Scientific Travels)

Research data & Development

• Redesign of the project’s landing page
• Development of a Gallery of "Drawings and Sketches"
• Revision of the documentation of the project’s Digital methodology (Stefan Dumont)

Version 8 (May 2022)

Travel Journals

• Updates on the Trip to Italy:
  • Voyage de Paris en Italie avec Gay Lussac 1805 [= Italian Travel Journal], edited by Cettina Rapisarda and Christian Thomas. (significantly expanded edition)
  • Antike Marmorarten nach Zoega’s Bestimmungen [document from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin as a supplement to the Italian Travel Journal], edited by Cettina Rapisarda and Christian Thomas
• Research paper by Patrick Anthony on the Russian-Siberian Travel Journal of 1829

Topics

• Correspondence (15 letters) with the Schomburgk brothers (Sir Robert Hermann, Otto Alfred and Moritz Richard), edited by Ulrich Päßler (Scientific Travels)
• Humboldt paper Outline of the Relation historique, edited by Tobias Kraft

Research data & Development

• Redesign of the landing page
• Update of database architecture (now eXist-db 5.3.1)
• New search with improved results
• Display of editorial status (initially only for journals)
• Edition guidelines v. 1.1.2
• New version 1.3 of the API for retrieving data in TEI-XML: retrieval of all documents and register entities, data dump on GitHub (to be released in June 2022).

Version 7 (September 2021)

Travel Journals

• Voyage de Paris en Italie avec Gay Lussac 1805 [= Italian Travel Journal], edited by Christian Thomas
• Physiology. Galvanism [Raja torpedo] [= American Travel Journal, Vol. III, pp. 72r-v]

Topics

• Correspondence with Johann Moritz Rugendas (26 letters), plus a letter to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, edited by Ulrich Päßler (Scientific Travels)

Research data & Development

• Glossary (under construction).

Version 6 (October 2020)

Travel Journals

• From Valencia to Madrid. [= Spanish Travel Journal of 1799], edited by Christian Thomas and Dominik Erdmann. With an introduction by Ulrike Leitner.
• Paris-Toulon (1798) [= French Travel Journal], edited by Christian Thomas and David Blankenstein
• Voyage d'Espagne aux Canaries et à Cumaná [= American Travel Journals, Vol. I], edited by Carmen Götz. Significant improvement in annotation and markup, including: correct conversion of the French Revolutionary calendar; display of Humboldt's references to other diary sections.
• Fragments of the Siberian Travel Journal 1829 [= Russian-Siberian Travel Journal, Vol. I], edited by Tobias Kraft and Florian Schnee (beta version). With an introduction by the editors.

Topics

• Correspondence (complete edition, 50+ letters) with the Schlagintweit brothers (Hermann, Adolph, Robert, and Emil), edited by Moritz von Brescius, Linda Martin, and Ulrich Päßler, 1 Humboldt paper (Scientific Travels)
• 5 translations of Humboldt papers (Phytogeography), such as the "Matériaux pour la nouvelle édition de la Géographie des plantes"
• Introduction by Kerstin Aranda to Ehrenberg's Journal of the Russian-Siberian Journey (Scientific Travels)

Research data & Development

• Edition Guidelines v. 0.17-1.0
• Improved navigation and tab display
• Chronology highlights
• Display of historical calendar data

Version 5 (September 2019)

Travel Journals

• Voyage d'Espagne aux Canaries et à Cumaná [= American Travel Journals, Vol. I], edited by Carmen Götz. Revision of transcription by re-examining the entire edited text against the manuscript (completed); revision of markup and scholarly commentary (to be continued).

Topic

• Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg's Journal of the Russian-Siberian Voyage with Alexander von Humboldt 1829, edited by Kerstin Aranda, Ulrich Päßler, and Christian Thomas (Scientific Travels)
• Correspondence with the Schlagintweit brothers (selection). With an introduction by Moritz von Brescius (Scientific Travels)

Research data & Development

• Improved plant name index (including new databases and filter function on specific documents)

Version 4 (May 2019)

Topics

• 1 Humboldt paper
• 2 research papers by Staffan Müller-Wille/Katrin Böhme and Matthias Glaubrecht (Phytogeography)

Research data & Development

• Plant Name Index
• Enhanced chronology (new search and linked data filters)

Version 3 (September 2018)

Travel Journals

• Voyage d'Espagne aux Canaries et à Cumaná [= American Travel Journal, Vol. I], edited by Ulrike Leitner (beta version) with research papers (contributions by Ulrike Leitner and Carmen Götz)
• Reise. 1790. England. [= English Travel Journal], edited by Dominik Erdmann and Christian Thomas with research dossier (Introduction by Dominik Erdmann)

Topics

• 4 Humboldt papers, such as the "Publishing contract for the "Géographie des plantes dans les deux hémisphères" (1825)"
• General Introduction to the topic "Phytogeography" by Ulrich Päßler
• Correspondence with Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (300+ letters), curated and revised version of the 2008 edition by Anne Wendt (Scientific Travels)

Research data & Development

• Multilingual navigation (German/English)
• Edition Guidelines v. 0.9-0.16

Version 2 (September 2017)

Topics

• 29 Humboldt papers for the planned new edition of Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen (Humboldt/Kunth), such as the "Énumération des Plantes de la Province de Quito"
• An introduction by Ulrich Päßler (Phytogeography)

Version 1 (May 2017)

Topics

• 3 Humboldt papers for the new edition of Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen, such as the "Humboldt's Questions to Robert Brown (Paris, 1816)" (Phytogeography)

Research data & Development

• Alexander von Humboldt Chronology
• Archiving and permanent versioning of the edition data
• APIs and XML download of the edited texts
• Improved search

BETA version (September 2016)

Travel Journals

• Isle de Cube. Antilles en général [Cuban Travel Journal of 1804], edited by Ulrike Leitner, Piotr Tylus, and Michael Zeuske
• Research papers on the Cuban Travel Journal of 1804 (contributions by Ottmar Ette, Ulrike Leitner, Piotr Tylus and Michael Zeuske)

Topics

• Correspondence with Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, Franz J. F. Meyen, Karl Ludwig Willdenow and Carl Sigismund Kunth (108 letters), edited by Ulrich Päßler and Petra Werner (Phytogeography)

Research data & Development

• Index of personal name entities
• Index of place name entities
• Integration of external correspondence data via correspSearch
• Integration of the Zotero database