Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vpiej-l Message-ID: <9304141238.AA07955@sansfoy.lib.virginia.edu> Approved-By: James Powell Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 15:54:16 EDT Sender: "Publishing E-Journals : Publishing, Archiving, and Access" From: John Price-Wilkin Subject: Society plans electronic publishing effort Lines: 257 Cross-posted to the following library lists: Colldv-l, Exlibris, libref-l, pacs-l, rlgpscd, VPIEJ-L SOCIETY FOR EARLY ENGLISH AND NORSE ELECTRONIC TEXTS We announce with this notice, which we are sending to several related lists, the formation of a new scholarly organiza- tion, The Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET). SEENET will procure, produce, and disseminate scholar- ly electronic editions of Old Norse, Old English and Middle English texts. We will combine the full capacities of computer technology with the highest standards of traditional scholarly editing to publish machine-readable texts with reliable introduc- tory materials, annotations, and apparatus. Texts will conform to the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) guidelines for markup in the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). An electronic text offers unprecedented advantages to historians, literary critics, linguists, and editors. Unlike earlier, printed critical texts, the electronic text permits multiple manipulations of individual manuscripts, archetypes, and critical texts as well as combinations of each. Such texts lend themselves to sophisticated searches, concordancing, collations, and other forms of text retrieval. Editors may present in full both "good" and "bad" manuscripts, permitting literary historians to study the history of the reception of the text as shown by scribal changes or marginal annotations. Historical linguists may study developments in the history of the language through access to large databases of scribal spellings in all the dia- lects and time periods reflected in many different textual traditions. Scholars interested in stylistic analysis are able to make fuller and more complete studies of metrical, lexical, or syntactic patterning than are possible with printed texts. Moreover, the extremely flexible nature of an electronic text is ideal for representing complex textual traditions, even of works like Piers Plowman, where editors confront high degrees of ambi- guity and uncertainty. Electronic editions will accommodate scholars who prefer "best text" documentary editions as well as those who want the best possible modern editorial reconstruc- tions. Questions of the accessibility and quality of electronic texts are, therefore, a matter of current concern to a scholarly community increasingly enabled by electronic media. We are all aware that the limitations imposed by the printed codex need no longer constrain our historical, cultural, linguistic, or textual scholarship. Nevertheless, the institutional means for producing and disseminating reliable electronic texts are at present haphazard and inadequate. Scholars familiar with the Oxford Text Archive or with the Anglo-Saxon corpus know only too well how various is the quality of texts in those useful collections. Meanwhile, novice editors enthusiastic about computing are adapting older printed editions for more or less elaborate forms of textual manipulation. Unhappily, such editions are more often selected for the single reason that they are out of copyright than for the quality of their texts. Furthermore, large and extremely costly commercial projects such as the Chadwyck-Healey version of the Patrologia Latina or their similar corpus of English poetry have become means of disseminating older, obsolete editions. Such collections are too immediately useful to be dis- missed in spite of the uneven quality of the texts thus made available, but scholars are coming to associate electronic texts with poor editions. If the full potential of computer technology is to be realized by scholars in the humanities, our first and most important task will be to make available reliable scholarly editions, texts that are as sophisticated in their linguistic, paleographic, codicological, historical dimensions as they are in their computer technology. PUBLICATIONS Our Editorial Board will solicit, evaluate, select, and oversee scholarly editions for publication in three series. SERIES A will provide book-length editions published on floppy disks (usually under five megabytes). We will publish both diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript texts and critical texts, or combinations of the two. Texts will be accompanied by an introduction as well as appropriate historical, paleographic, codicological, lexical, and interpretative annotations. SERIES B will consist of multi-level editions of cul- turally important works with complex textual or criti- cal traditions. Texts in this series will accommodate some or all of the following features: (a) digitized facsimiles of some or all manuscripts, (b) diplomatic transcriptions of each manuscript with appropriate annotation, (c) a reconstructed archetype with annotation, (d) an edited text with annotations (perhaps incor- porating critical comments of previous editors), (e) a display of collated variants, (f) lemmatized concordances of each manuscript, the archetype, and the critical text, (g) critical introduction, and (h) a glossary. Texts in Series B will be published on CD-ROM disks or tape. SERIES C will serve an interim function by publishing electronic versions of useful older editions with SGML markup, until such time as the works may be re-edited. One example might be an electronic version of Finnur J"nsson's Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning published in 1912-15 with both diplomatic transcriptions from single manuscripts (Series A) and heavily edited texts of the skaldic corpus (Series B). An electronic text of this outdated printed text would serve until SEENET is able to publish new electronic versions of the skaldic corpus. STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIETY (a) The Editorial Board Peter Baker, The University of Virginia. Hoyt N. Duggan, The University of Virginia. A. S. G. Edwards, University of Victoria, British Columbia Anthony Faulkes, The University of Birmingham Ralph Hanna III, University of California--River- side Judith Jesch, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham John Price-Wilkin, Information Management Coordi- nator, Alderman Library, The University of Virginia Peter Robinson, Computing Service, Oxford University Thorlac Turville-Petre, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham (b) The ADVISORY BOARD consists of an international group of distinguished medievalists who will advise SEENET's Board of Edi- tors on matters of policy. The present Advisory Board consists of the following scholars: Professors John Alford, Michigan State University; Ste- phen Barney, University of California, Irvine; Larry D. Benson, Harvard University; John Burrow, Bristol; Patrick Conner, West Virginia University; Marilyn Deegan, Oxford University; Christine Fell, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham; Allen Frantzen, Loyola University, Chicago; David Greetham, Graduate School and University Center, CUNY; Thomas J. Heffernan, University of Tennessee; Robert L. Kellogg, University of Virginia; Kevin Kiernan, University of Kentucky; V.A. Kolve, University of California, Los Angeles; Ian Lancashire, University of Toronto; Michael Lapidge, Cambridge University; Anne Middleton, Univer- sity of California, Berkeley; Alistair Minnis, Univer- sity of York; Douglas Moffat, University of Michigan; Derek Pearsall, Harvard University; Fred Robinson, Yale University; Geoffrey Russom, Brown University; R. A. Shoaf, University of Florida, A. C. Spearing, Univer- sity of Virginia; and Paul Szarmach, SUNY Binghamton. (c) The Members of the Society Members will pay an annual fee which will entitle them to receive the SEENET Newsletter and one text from Series A or C. Just as with the Early English Text Society, members will be able to purchase SEENET's other electronic texts at a discounted price, and the texts will be available to non-members at a higher price. We are presently seeking the sponsorship of a major academic press to publish our three series, and it would be helpful in that effort if we can offer pub- lishers an idea of the potential membership for the new society. We would like to know what kinds of member- ship fees would be acceptable and whether scholars would be willing to submit their scholarly electronic texts to SEENET for publication. Response Form 1. Is your library likely to join SEENET? 2. Would the library be more interested in acquiring specific texts from SEENET or in acquiring all SEENET texts? 3. Would your library be willing to pay $30.00 per year to be a member of SEENET and receive one text from Series A or C? Would it pay $60.00? How much would your library be willing to pay for individual Series A or C texts on a standing order basis? Keep in mind that each is equivalent in length to printed books of 200-500 pages. 4. Does your library's collection development policy address collecting electronic texts? If so, would you mind sharing your policy with SEENET. 5. What is your library's involvement in acquiring electronic texts and making them accessible? Are there other groups on campus doing this, and if so, are the efforts being coordinated with the library? 6. If electronic texts are currently being made available by your institution, in what formats and through what means (e.g., personal computers or networked access) are the texts made available? 7. What distribution medium would your institution prefer in receiving texts? 8. What rights/privileges for access and distribution of texts does your library feel are necessary to include in licensing? 9. Are scholars at your institution working with specific Old English, Old Norse, or Middle English texts that you would particularly like to see become available? 10. What texts would you most like to see available in electron- ic form? We invite comments, criticism, and support from librarians. Responses by e-mail may be directed to hnd@virginia.edu (or) hnd@virginia.bitnet or by regular post to either Thorlac Turville-Petre Department of English University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD England or Hoyt N. Duggan Department of English The University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903.