6.0376 Rs: Digitizing; TLL; Papers; Circularity (4/80)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 2 Dec 1992 21:41:58 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0376. Wednesday, 2 Dec 1992.


(1) Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 18:21:11 PST (33 lines)
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 6.0368 Info wanted on Manuscript Scanning (1/162)

(2) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:20:50 -0500 (20 lines)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: TLL

(3) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 10:20:01 EST (19 lines)
From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM>
Subject: Re: 6.0371 Rs: Newspapers; Perform-L (3/63)

(4) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 20:55:54 EST (8 lines)
From: john a rea <JAREA@UKCC.uky.edu>
Subject: circularity of reference

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 18:21:11 PST
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 6.0368 Info wanted on Manuscript Scanning (1/162)

I think that the first people you would want to contact would be
IBM Spain, which is in the finishing stages of digitizing a
significant portion of the Archivo General de Indias, in
Seville, some nine million documents.

My own knowledge of CD-ROM technology is limited, but it is clear
from your description that you are going to have to issue a set
of CD-ROM disks rather than one. The "state of the art" for
gray-scale compression is about 300K per image (this is what
the IBM project achieves and what other projects I am familiar with
achieve as well). With roughly 550 MB of space on a standard CD-ROM
disk, you can get fewer than 2000 black-and-white images on a disk.
Full color images would require even more space.

So, just for the sake of argument, let's say 20 disks with a 1,000
pages each. What can you sell them for and who's going to buy them?

On the other hand, a much more useful investment of time and money
would be the transcription of these materials in a TEI-conformant
system. All of this material could comfortably fit on a CD-ROM
disk in text mode, and I suspect that the the audience would be
much larger, all of those interested in Wittgenstein's thought
rather than just specialists in philosophy and the edition of
modern philosophical texts.

This project needs rethinking.

Charles Faulhaber
UC Berkeley
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:20:50 -0500
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: TLL

In response to the query about the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL):

There are two things that commonly go by the name of the TLL: (1) a
series of books, steadily progressing through the alphabet but not yet
complete, put together by a scholarly project of long standing in
Munich; and (2) a collection of Latin texts to AD 200, in electronic form,
published on CD-ROM by the Packard Humanities Institute. The former
is not, alas, accessible electronically. The latter is available, for
a 3-year license fee of $100 US, from the PHI, 300 Second St., Suite
201, Los Altos, CA 94022, xb.m07@stanford.bitnet. Software is
required. One package for Windows, Pharos, is available via
anonymous-ftp. Perhaps those who know about the present state of
software for the PHI disks could fill us all in.

Willard McCarty

(3) --------------------------------------------------------------27----
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 10:20:01 EST
From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM>
Subject: Re: 6.0371 Rs: Newspapers; Perform-L (3/63)

VUTEXT also has a lot of newspapers available online. They also have
a special education rate for institutions. I think someone has
already mentioned the Dialog/Knowledge Index route.
In addition, some papers are "more online" than others. A list
can be found in Mark Leff's list of sources (BBSs) of interest to
journalists. There is a lot of other material in there, so I
can't excerpt it easily, but the entire list is available from
LISTSERV@ULKYVM (or LISTSERV@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU) with the
command GET MEDIA BBSLIST.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM
Journalism Dept. Internet: 3zlufur@cmuvm.csv.cmich.edu
Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 USA The WELL: eparker@well.sf.ca.us
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------13----
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 20:55:54 EST
From: john a rea <JAREA@UKCC.uky.edu>
Subject: circularity of reference

One of my favorites appeared in a dictionary (which was not innocent of the
'anteater' 'ardvark' type either):

Dictionary: This is one.