Launched on October 23, 2013, the Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA) celebrates its first year of operation this week, during Open Access Week.
The site received 1.2 million “hits” from poetry lovers in its first 10 days; after a year, monthly usage averages 10,000 visits and 377,000 page views per month. About 80% of visitors are from English-speaking countries, with the rest coming from Italy, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, India, Sudan, Pakistan, and other countries world-wide.
Favorite poems vary from month to month, driven by use of EDA in secondary schools as well as college and university courses. But some poems appear frequently: “Because I could not stop for Death“; “My Life had stood a Loaded Gun”; “I’m Nobody! Who are you?“; ” ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers–“; “I dwell in Possibility–“; and “The Soul selects her own Society–“.
Houghton Library collaborated with the American Antiquarian Society, Amherst College, Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, Smith College, Vassar College and Beinecke Library, Yale University, on this first release of the site. Since then, images have been contributed by Dumbarton Oaks (a manuscript believed lost); Morgan Library & Museum, New York Public Library (Berg Collection and Manuscripts and Archives), and The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia. More images are in the works, and these will be added in a second release, scheduled for early 2015.
Image above: Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington Dickinson, [December 1880] Pencil; 1p. Begins: Birthday of but a single pang… Sent to Susan Dickinson on her 19th birthday. JL 679, J 1488, Fr 1541. Houghton Library MS Am 1118.5 (B155).
Thanks to Leslie Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, for contributing this post.