6.0715 Rs: Gopher and Copyright and Variant Texts (2/79)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Fri, 7 May 1993 17:57:40 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0715. Friday, 7 May 1993.
(1) Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 09:59:32 -0500 (37 lines)
From: kbarger@ACC.HAVERFORD.EDU (Kyle Barger)
Subject: Re: 6.0711 R: Gopher and Copyright (1/48)
(2) Date: Fri, 07 May 93 10:33:22 CDT (42 lines)
From: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <U35395@UICVM>
Subject: Gopher and variant texts
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 09:59:32 -0500
From: kbarger@ACC.HAVERFORD.EDU (Kyle Barger)
Subject: Re: 6.0711 R: Gopher and Copyright (1/48)
In the Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0711. Thursday, 6 May 1993,
Donald A Spaeth <GKHA13@CMS.GLASGOW.AC.UK> writes:
>As a reader, I don't like the thought that there might be many versions
>of the same text, each with subtle differences. This means I spend far
>more time navigating through menus, where many of the choices may be
>(virtually) the same thing. And how do I choose? I need a validated
>base text (or base dataset), both for my own use as a scholar and
>for citation purposes. I can imagine spending hours downloading
>versions and deciding which one I should use. If this is the future
>of Gopher, then no reputable scholar will use it.
But surely you face the same problem with printed texts. How many editions
are there of, for instance, a given Shakespeare play? How do you choose
between them? The answer is, for the most part, you don't. Certain
editions have become accepted for scholarly work due to a number of
factors--who edited the edition, what source materials were used, etc. etc.
Depending on what work is involved, you might need to choose between a
small handful of scholarly editions, but you're unlikely to consider EVERY
edition currently available. Shakespeare scholars don't (I presume, not
being any kind of literary scholar) check out each new mass market printing
of _Macbeth_ to see if it's any good.
The same thing needs to happen in the electronic arena (and will, I think,
naturally). Certain versions of a given text will become standard in the
academic community based on similar factors. People who do not know or
care about such distinctions will get whatever version comes to hand, while
scholars will have learned, through experience and recommendations from
colleagues, which editions can be trusted for their purposes.
--
Kyle Barger Haverford College Academic Computing
kbarger@haverford.edu
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------54----
Date: Fri, 07 May 93 10:33:22 CDT
From: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <U35395@UICVM>
Subject: Gopher and variant texts
On Thu, 6 May 1993 11:32:20 BST, in Humanist 6.0711, Donald Spaeth said:
>As a reader, I don't like the thought that there might be many versions
>of the same text, each with subtle differences. This means I spend far
>more time navigating through menus, where many of the choices may be
>(virtually) the same thing. And how do I choose? I need a validated
>base text (or base dataset), both for my own use as a scholar and
>for citation purposes. I can imagine spending hours downloading
>versions and deciding which one I should use. If this is the future
>of Gopher, then no reputable scholar will use it.
Wait a moment, Don. I know how you feel. But if no reputable scholar
will use texts under such circumstances, how is it that reputable
scholars still read Shakespeare, and the Bible, and Mark Twain, and folk
literature, and all of the other texts interesting enough to have been
preserved more than once? Of them too, you can truly say that there are
"many versions of the same text, each with subtle differences."
Variation is pretty much a fact of life about texts, and electronic text
is a lot more like oral text, manuscript, and samizdat than like print
in this regard (the cost of creating a variant version is the same as
the cost of copying without change, as near as makes no difference). I
know that much of the manuscript material you work with is preserved
only in one copy and has never been printed, but that is not the norm.
Any text which has attracted enough attention to be copied or published
is almost inevitably going to have variants. Don't blame Gopher for
making the fact more visible!
[N.B. This is an observation about the nature of text and its
transmission. It does not constitute a claim that it's a good idea to
have dozens of out-of-date copies of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review
ghosting around the net distracting the readers and irritating the
librarians. Nor are the opinions expressed necessarily those of the
institutions which happen to write my paycheck, though the world might
be a better place if they were.]
-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
ACH / ACL / ALLC Text Encoding Initiative
University of Illinois at Chicago