Oxford Electronic Shakespeare, etc., cont. (148)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Sat, 11 Mar 89 01:03:26 EST


Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 702. Saturday, 11 Mar 1989.


(1) Date: 10 March 1989, 09:10:23 EST (35 lines)
From: Brad Inwood (416) 978-3178 INWOOD at UTOREPAS

(2) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89 10:02:46 EST (51 lines)
From: elli@harvunxw.BITNET (Elli Mylonas)
Subject: Charging for Data (47)

(3) Date: Fri, 10 MAR 89 10:43:01 GMT (14 lines)
From: CATHERINE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
Subject: politeness to all

(4) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89 14:35:33 EST (9 lines)
From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: Oxford Electronic Shakespeare, cont. (150)

(5) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89 12:29:45 GMT (6 lines)
From: Brian Molyneaux 0703-551358 <AYI004@IBM.SOUTHAMPTON.AC.UK>

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 10 March 1989, 09:10:23 EST
From: Brad Inwood (416) 978-3178 INWOOD at UTOREPAS

Re: Electronic Shakespeare.

Yes, of course it should be cheaper; so should most everything I
want and need. But at my ideal price (you can guess) no one provided it.
There are, presumably, advantages in having a big press like Oxford get
into the business of distributing electronic text: they go through the
legal hassles (or own the copyright already), develop and support the
expertise, give us someone to bitch at if the text is inaccurate, someone
to harass for improved markup schemes, etc. But stability, even the
stability of a target for our complaints, has a price. Large businesses
don't do very much at a loss, unless they are very sure that a big
profit is coming by next quarter. And publishers, as many Humanists know,
are always conservative. So if we want someone like OUP to do our
electronic text publication, we will probably be stuck in the short
term with all the drawbacks as well as the advantages. Those of us who
have struggled with the APA repository and the TLG may appreciate OUP
more, at any price.

That said, OF COURSE, the markup should be more general -- I would
love to see the markup used in this case, not so I can write a new text
retrieval programme (SR is right on that) but so that I can set myself t
editing the text for my Wordcruncher as *I* like it. Which
suggests that SR's further suggestion about CD-ROM is a non-starter.
Few of us want an absolutely read-only text. And probably even fewer
of us have CD-drives. Ibycus users are all too familiar with file transfer
headaches. So by all means let us have the text on standard floppies --
we'll copy it onto our (now relatively cheap) big hard drives. And let
us start the campaign for re-release in more generic mark-up form --
and while we are at it we can do the same for the TLG. And let us see which
bureaucracy gives us our SGML text base first. I am betting on OUP.

Brad Inwood, Classics, University of Toronto
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------54----
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89 10:02:46 EST
From: elli@harvunxw.BITNET (Elli Mylonas)
Subject: Charging for Data (47)

Let me hurl myself *politely* into the fray...
Although I understand the problem of marketing information on this new
electronic medium, and realize that preparing it is a difficult task
I also think that a lot of electronic publishing is priced far higher
than is reasonable considering who the market might be.
I do not direct this specifically at OUP, by the way.
However, although startup for an electronic edition may be more
expensive--having to get the information into the new form--I hope that
new editions, excerpts, anthologizing, educational editions etc. will be
a great deal easier to derive from the initial material.
That means that any subsequent material should cost less. Also, It seems that
production for an electronic edition may be less. (I am not sure of that,
since I don't know what it costs to print a book, but I do know what it
costs for CD ROM production.)
So perhaps that startup cost should not be the one taken into account
when pricing an electronic edition?
By the way, I think that a lot of commercial software is extremely
expensive. The only way I use the programs that I own personally is
because of special university site licensing agreements, so that I
don't have to pay $295 (mailorder) for MS Word and other such useful
programs. It seems that electronic material is often priced according
to the perceptions of what people who own computers, or who are in
a particular area of computing, are expected to pay.
Brian Hawkins, vice president of academic computing at Brown University,
discussed the pricing of software in an article in Academic Computing
(spring 1988, I think). He concluded, from statistics that they had
collected at Brown, that there is about a 30 dollar window which
separates software that is bought from software that is stolen. Programs
priced at about $40-60 sold the expected number of copies. Programs
that were priced over $80 did not sell the anticipated number of copies,
and I have the impression that their use did not necessarily diminish.
Exact reference can be furnished if anyone wants it.
I bring this up because it seems that certain types of pricing make
a product mora attractive.
Since a company like OUP et. al. has to make a profit, it would be nice
to see *very* aggressive marketing at universities, at least, and
a general sliding scale.
Finally, from my own experience, I have to agree with Sebastian, and
say that there is a huge market of non-specialists who would love to
get their hands on the text of Shakespeare, the Bible, Greek Lit, or
whatever they read after work. These people also have home computers,
and would love to have these electronic texts to play with at home.
They cannot necessarily pay full price, either, but again might generate
quantity at a lower cost.
This is a loose collection of ideas about pricing of electronic information,
generated by Sebastian's and OUP's exchange-- any other comments?
--elli mylonas (elli@wjh12.harvard.edu)
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Fri, 10 MAR 89 10:43:01 GMT
From: CATHERINE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
Subject: politeness to all

Sebastian is entitled to his opinions. But surely these opinions (if only
he took the trouble to make them informed opinions) should be phrased so
that all eyes might read them without embarassment. In his reply to Ruth
Glynn's sizzling defence, he says "if I had known she was going to read it
I would have put it more politely". I, for one, want no part in any
internecine invective; surely we Humanists are entitled to mutual courtesy
and respect. If our opinions cannot be stated in terms fit for all eyes,
let them not be stated at all. It is quite simply a matter of decency and
respect. Catherine Griffin Oxford University Computing Service
(Catherine%uk.ac.oxford.vax@earn-relay)
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------20----
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89 14:35:33 EST
From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: Oxford Electronic Shakespeare, cont. (150)

Without entering into personalities, I would like to second
enthusiastically Sebastian Rahtz's comments on electronic
publishing and pricing policies as expressed in his most
recent posting. We really do need to make electronic texts
available outside of the computing in the humanities ghetto.
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------10----
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89 12:29:45 GMT
From: Brian Molyneaux 0703-551358 <AYI004@IBM.SOUTHAMPTON.AC.UK>

The Gender of Praise

Wouldn't supporters of Ruth G. say 'Brava!'?