"Livingstone’s 1870 Field Diary and Select 1870-1871 Manuscripts," part of the Livingstone Online digital archive, has been designated an Approved Edition by the Modern Language Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions. The seal honors excellence in editing, recognizing the archive as a reliable text based on accuracy, adequacy, appropriateness, consistency, and explicitness.
Adrian Wisnicki, associate professor of English, is the director of the Livingstone Online project that uses spectral imaging to recover Livingstone's lost writings. The Victorian explorer wrote diary entries, including cultural observations and geographical information, on newsprint with homemade ink, but the writing has faded over time.
The research is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which named the project an "esssential"—one of 50 projects that represent “the best of the work the NEH has funded over the last 50 years.”
