"What is most important in evaluating these works is acknowledging that none of them stand-alone. Many work off one another and may be used in tandem; in all likelihood the developers of the various archives may have been (or are still) in conversation with one another and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their various archives, allowing for others to develop digital works that are not intended to shadow other archives, but instead work alongside them."

To which I would add a healthy sense of competition. Any scholarly field is ultimately a pretty small world, and it's certainly true that the developers of many of the online Blake resources are aware and mindful of one another's efforts. What ultimately distinguishes the projects are not only their content and intellectual objectives, but material resoruces institutional relations. The WBA, for example, has been fairly well funded by the standards of most humanities projects (though I'd add that we've had to work for every nickel in the form of meticulous grant applications). The WBA fields three general editors and a largish project staff. The Blake Digital Text project, by contrast, has been more of a one man show, with Nelson Hilton's energy sustaining it. The Rosenwald site, meanwhile, can tap into the resources of LC, but its priorities are in turn set by the needs of that institution as a whole. My point, I suppose, is that each of these project is its own McGannian "social text", and that perspective is essential when examining the digital humanities in a critical light.