Sabato Morais Digital Repository

A digital archive of the correspondence, sermons, and manuscripts of Rev. Sabato Morais (1823–1897). Each item pairs a TEI transcription with a IIIF image viewer side by side, with descriptive metadata below.

Built with Astro + React, styled with Tailwind CSS v4, image viewing via Clover IIIF, and deployed on Netlify. It is a companion to the Gershwind-Bennett Isaac Leeser Digital Repository and a project of Judaica Digital Humanities at Penn.

Getting started

npm install
npm run dev      # http://localhost:4321
npm run build    # static build into dist/
npm run preview

Project structure

src/
  data/items.json          # the collection — one object per item
  pages/
    index.astro            # home / browsable grid
    about.astro            # about Morais + the repository
    item/[slug].astro      # the reading view (transcription | image + metadata)
  components/
    TEIViewer.tsx          # renders TEI XML with person/place markup toggle
    TEILoader.tsx          # fetches a TEI XML URL and hands it to TEIViewer
    Clover.tsx             # IIIF image viewer
    NavBar.astro / Footer.astro
  layouts/BaseLayout.astro # shell, SEO/OG tags, JSON-LD
  styles/global.css        # theme tokens (paper/ink palette) + fonts
  scripts/slugify.js

Adding your data

The whole collection lives in src/data/items.json — an array of item objects. It is generated from the TEI files in public/tei/:

node scripts/generateItems.mjs     # rebuilds src/data/items.json from public/tei/*.xml

The generator (scripts/generateItems.mjs) reads each TEI header and body and derives a base record (id, title from the first meaningful body line, description excerpt, place, extent), then enriches it from two CSVs in data/:

• data/apotheca.csv — the Apotheca/Colenda export, matched on metadata.identifier. Supplies date, geographic subjects, languages, authority names, rights, box/folder, call number, catalog link, and the ARK. From the ARK the generator builds the IIIF manifest URL https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/<ark>/manifest, which fills the Facsimile panel with real page images.
• data/descriptive.csv — the curated descriptive sheet, matched on work_id. Where present it wins for title, description, date/display date, people, and geography.

Items in the Apotheca export get a live IIIF viewer; items only in the descriptive sheet are not on Colenda yet, so they show "No image available" until they are — at which point their ARK lands in the Apotheca export and the manifest appears automatically. Curated titles/descriptions can also be pinned per id in the OVERRIDES map at the top of the script. Re-run the generator whenever you add or change TEI files or update the CSVs.

Per item, the reading view uses:

Field	Purpose
id, slug	Identifier and URL slug (/item/<slug>)
title, title2	Short title and a fuller display title
description	Abstract shown in the metadata block
creators, contributors	People (sender / recipient for letters)
type	Letter, Sermon, Manuscript, Book, …
date, hebrewdate	Gregorian and (optional) Hebrew dates
subject, language	Arrays of subject terms / languages
fromLocation, toLocation	Places (shown for letters)
collection	Holding collection, used in the citation
xml	URL to a raw TEI XML file → fills the transcription panel
manifestUrl	URL to a IIIF manifest → fills the image panel
thumbnail	Image URL for the home-page card

If xml or manifestUrl is empty, that panel shows a graceful "No transcription / image available" placeholder, so records render before their media is ready.

TEI

TEIViewer reads text > body and understands <lb/> (line breaks), <pb n=""/> (page breaks, rendered as labeled dividers), and toggleable <persName> / <placeName> markup. Point xml at a raw file URL (e.g. a GitHub raw.githubusercontent.com link to your TEI repo).

Deploying

netlify.toml builds with npm run build and publishes dist/. Set the production URL in astro.config.mjs (site:), currently https://morais.judaicadhpenn.org.