6.0549 Rs: Humanities Labs and E-Texts (3/123)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 23 Feb 1993 14:35:25 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0549. Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993.
(1) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 13:21:06 EST (35 lines)
From: David E. Latane <dlatane@hibbs.vcu.edu>
Subject: Re: 6.0544 Rs: Humanities Labs (2/62)
(2) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 11:36 EST (19 lines)
From: "Peter Graham, Rutgers U., (908) 932-2741"
<GRAHAM@ZODIAC.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 6.0544 Rs: Humanities Labs (2/62)
(3) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 13:55:10 EST (69 lines)
From: Elaine M Brennan <ELAINE@BROWNVM>
Subject: Humanities Labs and E-Texts
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 13:21:06 EST
From: David E. Latane <dlatane@hibbs.vcu.edu>
Subject: Re: 6.0544 Rs: Humanities Labs (2/62)
> Let us take up English Romantic poetry.
>
> Would it not be useful to have a collection of texts
> (say the hideously expensive Chandwick-Healey collection)
> and a sophisticated text analysis program, like TACT,
> and set students to comparing imagery in Wordsworth
> vs. Keats? Or using Richard Rust's poetry program
> which allows students systematically to highlight
> a certain feature and see how it is echoed throughout
> the poem?
>
> Can you do this on paper? You bet. Will it take longer
> on paper and be far less precise? You bet.
>
> Charles Faulhaber
> UC Berkeley
>
What worries me is that students will use the database to write
papers comparing the imagery of poems that they haven't read. So the
database fetches up the word "star" from the middle of "Prometheus
Unbound" and the word "star" from the middle of "Endymion," and
you'll get a perfectly precise bit of muck. I'm all for having
computers and texts on them, but at the risk of sounding like an old
fuddy-duffy I do fear that people will use them to generate lots of
student "input" and avoid the hard task of actually getting the
students to read complex, difficult texts.
David Latane'
dlatane@hibbs.vcu.edu
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------25----
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 11:36 EST
From: "Peter Graham, Rutgers U., (908) 932-2741" <GRAHAM@ZODIAC.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 6.0544 Rs: Humanities Labs (2/62)
>Let us take up English Romantic poetry.
Would it not be useful to have a collection of texts
(say the hideously expensive Chandwick-Healey collection)
and a sophisticated text analysis program,.....<
Let us take up the poetry *carefully.* Not only is the Chadwyck-Healey
collection expensive, it is vulnerable textually: it is specifically
a collection of out-of-copyright materials. To use that collection for the
kind of analysis Charles Faulhaber suggests (which I support in principle as
he's absolutely on the right path) would be to set aside all the textual
scholarship done on, say Wordsworth by OUP publications etc.
From: Peter Graham, Rutgers University Libraries
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------59----
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 13:55:10 EST
From: Elaine M Brennan <ELAINE@BROWNVM>
Subject: Humanities Labs and E-Texts
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Switching my hats for a moment, I'd like to follow up on the comments
various people have made about possible uses for e-texts (this is
not an academic question, per se, for me, since one of the issues I'm
struggling with at this very moment is how to make versions of electronic
texts available, what those versions should/could/might contain, and
what uses would be made of them). Charles Faulhaber mentioned
poetry in particular:
David Latane's reference to student's finding "star" in "Endymion" and
"star" in "Prometheous Unbound" and making an (albeit incorrect)
comparison between them suggests that these poems would at the least be
indexable by word usage. What else?
It also suggests some of the perils that will face the scholar/teacher
who wants to use electronic materials with students -- what kinds of
accommodations to traditional assignments might you consider making
when working with electronic texts rather than with <insert standard
anthology of your choice here>?
How would you find it most useful to have a large volume of poems created by
a single author handled? As a single unit, or as separate items that can
be followed one after another by opening multiple files? Or in pre-selected
units chosen by someone else? All of the above? Something else?
Would you want links or markers or indications that other works by the same
author are available? should that be available only from an author index or
would you want it somehow tied to the text file or files?
How would you prefer to see information about different printings of the
same text handled? layered into a single file but separable because of
mark-up? each version in a separate file with links indicated to the other
versions of the same file? a single text file followed by a list of the
emendations in each of the other printings of that text?
How much (if any) ancillary material would you like to see provided (chronology,
links with other authors of the period, etc.), especially for texts you expect
students to work with or that you're unfamiliar with?
For prose texts, again, how would you prefer to see them organized and indexed?
Do you have different standards for works that you're familiar with as opposed
to works you're not?
What would Charles Faulhaber's "sophisticated text analysis" program do? If
you had the say of it, what might it include? what features of the texts
would you want that text analysis program to be able to find and do something
with? or would you prefer that it operate on raw text?
Peter Graham refers to the problems of using texts that are out of copyright.
What if there's not (and never has been) a thoroughly edited version of a
particular text? What (if any) features from a collated edition might you
find important in an electronic version of that text?
How important is screen display? the ability to download a version of the
text?
What's important to you that I'm forgetting?
Elaine Brennan,
Assistant Director
Brown Women Writers Project