Reviewer: Erica Swenson Danowitz
The Milton S. Eisenhower Library and the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at John Hopkins University host Don Quixote de la Mancha, a digital exhibit of illustrations and translations. The exhibit provides access to digitized images from pages of rare and early editions of Don Quixote held by the George Peabody Library at John Hopkins. Text and links to other relevant sites accompany the images. Although not comprehensive, the site does provide some historic and literary information that would be helpful to Cervantes and literary scholars.
The Web site has a “museum‐like” design where users visit rooms or stations. It offers two ways, tour 1 and tour 2, of exploring the exhibit. The Web site contains 35 stations grouped in six “rooms”. The initial screen has a simple design. It contains links to the Spanish version of the page, to the two tours, and to John Hopkins University and its libraries. Tour 1 allows users to walk through the exhibit station by station. Each station contains images and text. In tour 2, users can navigate from room to room only. Tour 2 is text based with smaller images. There are links to larger versions of the images embedded in the page. The pages and graphics on the site often download very slowly. Tour 2 downloads faster and gives the users the choice of enlarging an image. It also presents an entire room on one page, which provides more continuity. The structure of tour 1 makes this tour much slower and renders it slightly disjointed at times.
Despite some flaws, the site is simple to navigate. Each tour has an index that lists all the documents found in the exhibit. The bottom of each page contains buttons that lead users back to the main page, the next room or station, and the previous room or station. The site does not offer any searching capabilities or help screens, but this exhibit is so small and well organized that these features are not really necessary. Users who have questions or comments about the exhibit can e‐mail the Webmaster of the site. The Webmaster responds promptly to queries.
Each room in the tour has a title that covers a particular subject. Rooms one and two present Cervantes’ life and a synopsis of his novel Don Quixote. Room three (entitled Severn Teackle Wallis) contributes to the uniqueness of this site with its presentation of the life of Severn Wallis, a generous donor to John Hopkins University. Wallis donated the earliest edition of Don Quixote that the library owns. Room three presents his life and his interest in Spanish literature and culture. This room serves as a tribute to a man who donated many important Spanish works to the John Hopkins Library. The designers have scanned images of title pages to some of the works Wallis donated. Rooms four and six provide information about the early editions and English translations of Don Quixote including its various illustrators, such as William Hogarth.
Harry Sieber, Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Spanish literature at John Hopkins University, served as curator of the exhibit with assistance from librarians at Hopkins’ Eisenhower Library. The site provides authoritative and concise information about Cervantes’ life and his literary career. Unfortunately, it appears that the English version of this site has not been updated since 1996, and some of the links to outside sources no longer work. The Spanish version has been updated, however, and is the better site to use if users can read this language. The exhibit’s Webmaster informed this reviewer via e‐mail that, although no significant additions will be made, the entire site is in the update process.
The Don Quixote Exhibit offers some very interesting background information on the life of Cervantes and his famous work. Despite its limitations, it would help students who need general information about Cervantes. This exhibit is recommended for academic libraries and students of Spanish literature as a complement to other Cervantes Web sites that are more comprehensive and informative. The exhibit provides links to these other sites. For more detailed information on Cervantes, users should consult the Cervantes Project 2001 hosted by Texas A&M University (http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/cervantes/english/index.html).
