Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does my institution become a Friend of the ISE?

Fill out our membership form. Once this is completed, print the invoice and mail it with payment to the address supplied. Be sure to include your institution's IP address(es) on the form.

2. How do I renew an annual gift?

In a year's time we will send a reminder by email to the contact person you enter on our form. When you return to the form, you will see that your address is recognized, and that the invoice is ready for you to print out again.

3. How permanent is the site?

In this world nothing is certain, but the ISE has full support from the University of Victoria. Our editors and Editorial Board are committed to the publication of quality material, and all our data are recorded in formats that will be readily updated as software and hardware evolve.

4. Who can access the database (staff, faculty, students, walk-ins, alumni?)

The site is basically open-access, but all who access the site from a Friend of the ISE IP address (directly or through a proxy server) will be able to take advantage of the additional features.

5. How can I be sure that the materials on the site are reliable?

The design of the site, with its metaphor of a library, makes the distinction between peer-reviewed and pre-print materials clear: all items in the Library are peer reviewed (Peer-reviewed plays will have "Library" highlighted at the top of the screen). Pre-prints are located in the Annex. Edited materials also indicate if they have been peer reviewed at the top of each page.

6. Will bookmarked pages and URLs change as the site is developed?

All our URLs are permanent. If, for any reason, we change a page's location we install an automatic redirect.

7. How do I give feedback on some area of the site?

Our contact page and feedback form provides all the information about how to contact us. Friends of the ISE will receive priority in our response time.

8. Can my library "brand" the ISE site by adding an acknowledgement on each page?

The name of your institution will be visible as a Friend of the ISE on each page of the site when it is accessed from your IP address.

9. How will our students access the additional features that come with our institution being a Friend of the ISE?

If they are using your network, or logging on to it from home, they will automatically see the additional features.

10. What happens if the site disappears for some reason?

This is rather like the moment on board the airplane when the flight attendant says "In the unlikely event that . . ." But we do commit to Friends of the ISE that they will have the right to put on their own servers all materials to which the ISE has rights, which is most of our site.

11. Why should my institution become a Friend of the ISE?

Here is a short list of reasons:

• The ISE is the principal scholarly resource on Shakespeare that most of their students will access from their laptops.
• Students accessing the site through their library will have access to a printable version of all pages on the site.
• Students will have access to an accurate citation for all pages.
• The ISE will "brand" contributing libraries by acknowledging their contribution.
• The ISE has provides the option of making an easy one-time gift, or alternatively annual donations spread over five years.
• Contributing libraries will be helping to create a legacy for everyone with a passion for Shakespeare. In particular, students from smaller institutions and from non-English-speaking countries will have access to high quality materials otherwise unavailable.
• The funding will indirectly benefit the additional sites we are supporting through our software and servers: the Queen's Men Editions and Digital Renaissance Editions, both of which are making out-of-print early modern plays freely available.
• The money the ISE receives will be spent exclusively on the site; as a non-profit organization, our administrative costs are minimal.
• All code on the site is open source. All materials published are made freely available for use in educational institutions.
• Contributing libraries will be helping to end the collections crisis.
  *Should the website no longer be available by open access, Friends of the ISE will have access to the content to which the ISE has rights.

12. How can I get answers to any questions I have about the ISE or the Making Waves Campaign?

Contact us via email at iseadmin@uvic.ca. We will reply as quickly as possible. Please include your name and phone number if you wish to speak directly with someone from our office.

13. Are usage statistics for my institution available?

We keep full tracking statistics. To find out usage for your institution, please contact us through the feedback form.

14. How is the money raised by the campaign to be spent?

Most of the cost of our infrastructure is covered by the University of Victoria. Funds raised will be used to employ student programmers and research assistants. The only overhead we pay is for the standard needs of a non-profit organization: modest accounting and legal expenses. Read more about the administration of our funds.

15. Why "Making Waves"?

We have based the wave motif on our logo, where a swan floats serenely above the waves, reflected in black below—a hint of our global reach, as "downunder" swans are black. The swan comes from Ben Jonson; in his wonderful poem in praise of Shakespeare, placed at the front of the First Folio of 1623—the first collection of Shakespeare's plays—he called Shakespeare the "sweet swan of Avon":

Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!

The legend of the swan was that only in its death did it find its voice. Read a selection of the poem with annotations, or the whole poem in its original spelling.

Please become a Friend of the ISE by filling out our membership form.