9.421 projects and people

Humanist (mccarty@phoenix.Princeton.EDU)
Tue, 2 Jan 1996 19:09:46 -0500 (EST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 421.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: Gloria McMillan <gmcmillan@east.pima.edu> (36)
Subject: RE: HUMANIST digest 90

[2] From: "Sarah L. Higley" <slhi@troi.cc.rochester.edu> (7)
Subject: Re: 9.420 New Year's greetings, with a query

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 02 Jan 1996 05:38:30 MST
From: Gloria McMillan <gmcmillan@east.pima.edu>
Subject: RE: HUMANIST digest 90

> Rather I'm inviting you to brainstorm creatively on what might work. Could
> Humanist play a role beyond the stage of discussion?
>
> WM

A friend of mine and I have decided to 'take the etext by its bits'
and do a TEI (SGML) tagged version of _Dracula_, w/o waiting for
any approval or funding. This makes work rather slow, in between
the other things that we need to do, but tagging is rather
therapeutic, like counting worry beads.

Since TEI is so much more highly structured and sensitive to fine-
tuned search commands, we could easily think of a whole myriad
of classics and even critical works that sould benefit from being
tagged. Our modest goal was to tag every speech by every char.
in the novel _Dracula_ so that scholars cd. pull the speeches
and do statistical analysis on them.

Other informal groups could set up to tag other works. A list like
this could be a place where people could throw out the name of a
work and others might volunteer. I would much rather that we all
get a just compensation for what we do, but there are only a few
top institutions doing any of this sort of work and getting grants
for it. The trickle of titles will be very slow and will be of their
choice. We (my friend and I) guessed that, by the time they finished
with all the minor 17th Century metaphysical poets, and got to more
'sensational' works such as _Dracula_ or _Frankenstein_, it might
be the year 2089 or so. The one thing to be said for little informal
projects id that they can choose their own subjects.

I look forward to seeing what other people have on their 'wish lists!'
This was a very good idea, Willard, and Happy New Year to you, too!

Gloria McMillan
Pima College, Tucson, AZ

*----------------*---------------*---------------*-----------------*
gmcmillan@east.pima.edu
http://east.pima.edu/ ESSAY COOPERATIVE
http://pimacc.pima.edu/~gmcmillan/glowww.html

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1996 18:01:34 -0500
From: "Sarah L. Higley" <slhi@troi.cc.rochester.edu>
Subject: Re: 9.420 New Year's greetings, with a query

"Could Humanist play a role beyond the stage of discussion"?
Yes, Willard, I think it could, and already has-- in bringing together
people to get these projects done. I don't know where it would go from
here, though; except to get a consensus from users as to what projects
are doable, and what labor and funding they would entail. So why not post
a call for necessary and doable projects?
Sarah Higley
slhi@troi.cc.rochester.edu