Salem, Mass., hysteria

Ray.

On September 18, 1692, Giles Cory was "pressed to death" after being accused of witchcraft. While all the other men and women who died in the Salem Witch Trials were hanged, Cory refused a trial by jury and thus got the dreaded sentence of peine forte et dure, which calls for rocks to be piled on top of the accused until he expires under the load. In Cory’s case, it took two days. He was obstinate to the end; his last words were, "More weight!"

Twenty years ago, a scholar digging into Cory’s life and death would've had to trudge all over the Northeast to visit the half-dozen libraries and historical societies that house the myriad documents, maps and images related to the Salem Witch Trials.

Scholars of today just visit Benjamin Ray's website. Ray, working through U.Va.’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH), has created a digital documentary archive and transcription project that gathers and centralizes data on the Salem Witch Trials for students, scholars and witchcraft aficionados everywhere.

"The computer is your collaborative research environment par excellence," Ray said. With the Salem Witch Trials project, "You have people getting in this research sandbox, in a moderated way, and getting excited about advancing a scholarly project."

The players in Ray’s sandbox include Bernard Rosenthal, an English professor at the University of Binghamton who serves as editor-in-chief of transcriptions; a team of managers, editors and assistants working at universities in the United States, Sweden and Finland; and the technical experts on IATH’s staff who do the behind-the-scenes work that makes the website run. 

The Salem Witch Trials website is just one of the jewels in IATH’s crown. Other research projects sponsored by the Institute include Ed Ayers’ The Valley of the Shadow; Stephen Railton’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture; Jerome McGann’s Rossetti Archive; as well as more than 40 other digital projects, in various stages of completion, covering music, linguistics, ethics, architecture and more.

IATH began in 1992 with a grant from IBM and a multi-year commitment of support from the University. The Institute now draws support from multiple corporations, foundations and individuals who contribute to projects.

The result is a multi-disciplinary forum that carries Thomas Jefferson’s educational ideals into the digital age. Researchers in the arts and humanities are able to take advantage of sophisticated technical support and advanced computer technology to collaborate on projects that push the frontiers of scholarship.

Every year, the Institute awards one or more two-year fellowships. The fellowships are open to U.Va. professors as well as others in the academic community. Once fellows come on board with IATH, they have ready access to the staff of programmers, web designers and IT specialists on the Institute’s staff.

Ray describes the relationship between IATH fellows and staff as a true collaboration. "Most IATH projects start out with a modest vision on the part of a fellow," he said. But once a fellow joins the Institute's team, he or she begins having weekly meetings with IATH staff to hash out development and design. That’s where the envelope gets pushed. "We talk about expanding beyond the way you might’ve originally conceived it. They say, 'What other things would you like to do?' Each fellow is expert in the scholarship, but transformation into the digital environment calls for new thinking."

IATH's presence at U.Va. is driving a new focus on digital work in the humanities at the University. One sign of this focus is the creation of a new MA program in digital humanities, which began in Fall 2004.

Meanwhile, IATH's fellows and staff, working in their quarters in the west wing of Alderman Library, go on building a digital storehouse of data that spans the breadth of the humanities. Given the boundless limits of the Web, one of the prime quandaries for IATH fellows is knowing when a project is actually done.

"That’s a problem with IATH projects -- they're so open-ended," Ray said with a laugh. As for his Salem Witch Trials archive, he plans to continue his work until the time comes for younger minds to take the controls. "There are other scholars in other institutions who could take it over. I'll turn it over someday."