The Process
Austen Adaptations was created by Iman Gareeboo as a digital site catalogue of Microsoft Word documentation created in service of doctoral research. Their personal website can be accessed here.
This project was created by downloading files from a forked version of Pat Dryburgh’s Hitchens theme from their Github Repository. A new repository was created on GitHub with a new ReadMe.md file and all the files edited on the personal laptop were uploaded into the repository. Austen Adaptations’ GitHub Repostory is accessible here and through the “GitHub Repo” link embedded at the bottom of the page next to the copyright details.
From there, edits were made based on the realization, through Github’s generation of the markdown files, that markdown lists require html encoding for embedded links and for italics instead of the markdown notation for both.
Additional edits were made to the Hitches theme’s default color theme, posts, and tabs. In an attempt to avoid having issues editing the finished product, edits were mostly made on the local laptop through the Visual Studio Code Application and on the GitHub page repostory prior to publishing the site through GitHub Pages.
Where Were These Adaptations Located?
The sources for the lists of published adaptations comes from a variety of sources, including Wikipedia as a starting point, and backed up through research into the publisher’s and sellers’ websites for clearer details on each adaptation.
Outside of individual research, the Rosenbach Musem & Library’s “Austen Mondays” vitual discussions and the Facebook Page were also helpful in adding to the list of adaptations.
Is This Catalogue Complete?
Absolutely NOT. Cataloguing Adaptations of Austen is a daunting project because there are often a slew of adaptations published every year, and some are more accessible than others.
In truth, this is more easily described as: “An Evolving Catalogue of English-language Austen Adaptations”.
What Lies in the Future?
This project is a preliminary exploration of the cataloguing process. It has revealed that there are judgement calls in deciding what is an adaptation and what is not; hence, moving forward, the creator will need to identify what “qualifies” as an “adaptation” and whether the data should be compiled from the get go with the nuances of adaptations that are, for example, tagged as: inspiration, loose adaptation, homage, literal, faithful, (by specific genre), chick-lit, indie, etc…
I suspect that this project will see several iterations, and that as the data is refined, and as different templates and programs are experimented with, (not excluding the individual programming skills or access to programming tools/experts/funding on the creator’s part), the capacity for this project to come close to achieving its goal of providing a navigeable/readable catalogue of Austen adaptations will increase.