5.0096 Responses: Citations; IR/UV Light; OED (3/50)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 23 May 91 17:57:30 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0096. Thursday, 23 May 1991.


(1) Date: 23 May 91 08:41:00 EST (16 lines)
From: "JAMES W. HALPORN" <halpornj@ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: CITATIONS

(2) Date: Wed, 22 May 91 19:19:38 CDT (22 lines)
From: James Marchand <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: 5.0079 Responses: Ultraviolet and Infrared Light

(3) Date: Thu, 23 May 91 16:24:36 -0400 (12 lines)
From: klempere@baker.dartmouth.edu (Katharina Klemperer)
Subject: OED online

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 23 May 91 08:41:00 EST
From: "JAMES W. HALPORN" <halpornj@ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: CITATIONS

I was taken by Roy Flannagan's observation that there is a group out
there that believes one should cite only five books written in the
last fifty years. It begins to explain to me why, in my field of
classical studies, in recent work in literary criticism of classical
texts, authors think nothing of consequence was done in the field
before 1950. This in a field in which the scholarly discipline as we
know it today began in the late 18th century (taking F.A. Wolf as the
"inventor" of modern classical scholarship). The motto, as I have
expressed elsewhere, for modern classical scholars is a revision of a
statement by St. Jerome: perierunt qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
J.W. Halporn (Indiana University)

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------31----
Date: Wed, 22 May 91 19:19:38 CDT
From: James Marchand <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: 5.0079 Responses: Ultraviolet and Infrared Light (3/57)

On the question of enhancement. The use of monochromatic light and
subsequent development (e.g. high-contrast development as used by
Bennett for the Gothic Skeireins) represents enhancement. All
reproduction has the problem that it has the potential to distort the
original, but alas that is what time, acci- dents and man do. One can
scan the photograph into the computer and use such techniques as
contrast stretching, density slicing, histogram manipula- tion,
darkening, lightening and the like. The important thing is to be scru-
pulously honest, even with oneself, and to label the techniques used. It
would be easy to falsify a document. One of my assistants typed a k
instead of an r in a reconstitution of a Gothic document we were doing;
the result was beautiful, but false. Documents preserved on CD-ROM
would be, I should imagine, better preserved than if they were
photographed onto microfilm, for example. Whatever, documents of
historic importance ought to be "pre- served" on multiple media and
"enhanced" if possible. Recently, I have been working on computer
programs to recover the subscript in palimpsests, where the computer is
our only hope.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------21----
Date: Thu, 23 May 91 16:24:36 -0400
From: klempere@baker.dartmouth.edu (Katharina Klemperer listserv)
Subject: OED online

It is true that a number of institutions have purchased and mounted the
electronic version of OED2. However, the license agreement restricts its
use to members of the institution that licensed it. So you should not
expect to be able to search the OED over the internet at another
institution.

Katharina Klemperer
Dartmouth College Library