Collation Blog Guest Post Guidelines

Purpose of The Collation

The Collation publishes informative and entertaining articles that expand the Folger’s mission of educating its audiences about our collections. The Collation reaches out to scholars, librarians, and the general public, educating all groups about the resources that are available at the Folger (including online resources, physical items in our collection, programs enabling study and research, and the expertise of our staff) and the types of research that are being conducted at the Folger (whether by Researchers, Fellows, or Staff).

Quick Summary of Guidelines

• Posts should be focused on the Folger’s collections
• Posts should have an informal style
• Posts should be approximately 400-1500 words
• Please include multiple images in your post
• Send images as separate files or as links to the Folger’s Digital Image Collection
• Provide captions for images including call number or other citation information
• If you need footnotes, format them as [note]text of footnote here[/note]
• Include a 2-4 sentence author bio with your post
• Don’t know where to start? Check out our suggested post formats.
• Reach out to collation@folger.edu with any questions

Please review the more extensive guidelines below.  

Subject of posts

Posts for The Collation  should be Folger-focused. Writing about individual items, collections, and work related to the collections is appropriate. Discussing wider topics as they might impact on the Folger can also be suitable (for instance, responding to debates about digitization, or portraits of Shakespeare) as can be posts teaching people about bibliographic matters (e.g., what signature marks are or the difference between engravings and illustrations), using examples from the Folger collection.

Above all, posts should be informative and entertaining. Avoid posts that say only, “this is cool!” or posts that say, “we have this.” Aim for posts that do both: “this is cool because it shows us something about the history of the letter Z” or “we have this and it’s useful/exciting for the following reasons.”

Our Collation authors include Folger staff, Folger fellows, past Folger fellows, and other researchers doing interesting things with the collection. Our most popular posts tend to be object-focused or pedagogical/how-to. We’ve found that posts that merely summarize a research project are not as widely read or shared. For fellows, this is an opportunity to take a deeper look at something or some theme in our collection related to your research project and have fun with it.

Collation series

If you are wondering how to get started on a Collation post, here are some suggested formats to consider. If you contribute to one of these series, your post will be part of a collection of themed posts and potentially reach a wider audience! Have an idea for a different type of post? Contact us at collation@folger.edu to ask about it!  

Folger Faves  

You’ve been banished to the Tower of London and can only bring five Folger collection items, a writing implement, and something to write on. What would you take with you, and why? Include a short paragraph for each item, explaining why it made your list (why you love it, how it has impacted your research, how it might be useful to you, how it has confounded you for years, etc.).  Don't forget your writing implement and surface (Moleskin, legal pad? Fountain pen? iPad and stylus?

Example: Coming soon!

Folger Mysteries

Previously known as Crocodile Mysteries, this type of post is published in two parts. The first part presents a collections-focused mystery image and asks readers for their best guesses in solving or identifying it. The second part presents the answer to the mystery, contextualizing the image and hopefully teaching our readers something new about the collection or the Folger.  

Example: The first post posing the mystery and the second post, A letter from Queen Anne to Buckingham locked with silk embroidery floss by Heather Wolfe.  

Folger Deep Dives

Did something you discovered at the Folger send you down an unexpected rabbit hole? This type of post takes a close focus on a single item, sometimes as narrowly as looking at single page or line of text.  

Examples: Censorship and the Valladolid Folio by Abner Aldarando and A monument more lasting than bronze by Sarah Powell.

Folger Artists

If you are an artistic research fellow or another artist working with our collection, we suggest centering your post around your work in progress and how the collection and research at the Folger have shaped it. Bonus points if you can share a sample of what you’re working on!

Examples: The Fairy King’s Grimoire by Alexander D’Agostino and Mariam Rising: A Short Closet Play by Jay Eddy.

Style of posts

One of the great things about writing a blog post is that it allows for a more informal voice: your actual voice, not your academic voice. The most important rule for The Collation is that no matter how esoteric your subject is, it needs to be explained without jargon and in an accessible style. If your subject requires the use of technical terms, please define them—it’s better to err on the side of defining too much than defining not enough. So if you’re writing about bindings, explain what “blind tooling” is; if it matters that a book is an octavo, explain what that means and why it matters. Use footnotes sparingly.

Length of posts

Between 400 – 1500 words.  

Images in posts

We strongly encourage the use of multiple images in your post. Images can be either found in the Digital Image Collection or they can be images you have taken yourself.  

Image format

For quality reasons, please email your images as separate files, rather than embedded in the text of your post. If you are using images from our Digital Image Collection, please include the URL for the image. In the text, indicate where each image goes by providing a clear filename or link.  

Captions

Captions should include, where applicable, Folger call number and opening. Editorial staff will provide alt text for all images.  

Image quality

If you are taking your own photos, please provide as good-quality images as possible (preferably at least 1500 pixels in the larger direction), with good color, even lighting, etc. For some helpful tips on taking photos in dark reading rooms, see Julie Ainsworth’s Q&A.

Non-Folger images

If you are using an image other than one you’ve taken of a Folger item or one that is from the Folger’s Digital Image Collection, please make sure we have permission to use it and make sure to include proper attribution of all outside images.

Permissions

Don’t quote or discuss people without clearing it with them first. General reporting is okay (“At a talk today, Sarah Werner discussed her interest in how theatrical performance is represented on the printed page.”) but a more detailed account of someone else’s research isn’t allowed unless they give you their permission.  

Same thing with photographs: it’s better to ask people if you can take their picture than to just take it; if you have a photo in which there are people, don’t label anyone unless they okay it, and try to be kind about not using photos that are unflattering.

See the Image in Posts section for details about image permissions.  

Style Sheet

• The title of the blog is in italics: The Collation.

• The full name of our institution is Folger Shakespeare Library; you can refer to it subsequently as the Folger.
• The blog uses the Oxford, or serial, comma: I like Shakespeare, Jonson, and Stoppard.
• Any discussion of items in our collections should include a link to the catalog record for that item, assuming it is in the catalog.  
• If you can’t avoid a footnote, format it as follows: simply enclose the text of your footnote with [note] and [/note] at the beginning and end, respectively, in the place where you want the note to be. This footnote format looks like this.[note]text of footnote here[/note]

Editorial Timeline

Reminders

If you schedule a post with us in advance, we will send a reminder a month in advance of the submission date.  

Submission Date

We ask to receive all submissions at least two weeks before the publication date to give us time to input your post and to make any edits.  

Rescheduling

If you need to reschedule a post for any reason, please let us know as soon as possible so we can find a substitute author for that week’s post.

Publication

We publish at least once a week, on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays at 11am.

Getting the post to us

Email the text to collation@folger.edu in as a word document, text file, or link to a google doc with the images as separate files. If your images are too large to send in an email, please send a link to shared drive where we can access them or reach out for assistance.  

Bios

Author bios appear at the end of the post. Bios should be 2-4 sentences.  

Examples can be found at the bottom of all Collation posts.

Transcriptions

We strive for a semi-diplomatic style of transcription that will work for printed texts, manuscripts, and graphic materials, presenting texts that are readable but also faithful to our belief that these texts are historically embedded in material objects. In practice, this means we follow these guidelines:

• Stick with the original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
• Maintain the u/v and i/j distinctions of early texts, but convert long-s to the standard "s"
• Unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise, do not adhere to the text’s original font choices (that is, when a text switches from roman to italic for a proper name, stay in roman).
• We expand abbreviations, using italics to indicate the letters omitted in the original. Letters that were superscript are lowered without being italicized.
• Since there is no modern thorn letter, change “ye” to “the” with the “th” in italics to indicate it has been altered: “the.”
• Brevigraphs like “&” or “&c” are preserved as is.

Guidelines Credit: Created by Sarah Werner, minor modifications made by Abbie Weinberg September 2015 and following. Major edits made by Heather Wolfe and Morgan Ellison, May 2024.