14.0606 indexing software? preserving oral literature?

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: Tue Jan 23 2001 - 02:46:09 EST

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 606.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

       [1] From: Charles Ess <cmess@drury.edu> (19)
             Subject: indexing software?

       [2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (16)
             Subject: preservation of oral "literature"?

    --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 07:32:18 +0000
             From: Charles Ess <cmess@drury.edu>
             Subject: indexing software?

    Dear Sister/Fellow Humanists:
    For some years, I was a fan of Prof. Schwartz's _Indexx_ software - an
    elegant DOS/ASCII-based program that served my needs well. This is _not_
    the sort of indexing program bundled with Nota Bene or Word that
    automatically searches for specified terms, identifies page numbers, etc.
    (which, interestingly enough, the Chicago Manual of Style warns _against_
    using). Rather, _Indexx_ was an independent program that would take entries
    typed in with page numbers, and then collate, eliminate duplicates,
    alphabetize, and format (roughly) according to specified styles.
    Alas (for DOS-based programs), I now work primarily on Macintosh (though I
    also use Windows and Linux) and my copy of Indexx seems to have disappeared
    (perhaps carried away on a dead machine?)
    In any case - I'd appreciate suggestions for indexing software along these
    lines. Or have all such things (elegant but functionally simple programs,
    written by academics primarily for academics, _priced_ for academics, etc.)
    gone the way of the dinosaurs?

    Please reply privately off-list: I'll compile good suggestions for a later
    posting.

    Cheers and best wishes for the new Millennium!

    Charles Ess
    Chair, Philosophy and Religion Department
    Drury University
    900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230
    Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435
    Home page: http://www.drury.edu/Departments/phil-relg/ess.html
    Co-chair, CATaC 2000: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac00/
    "Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by
    entering into relation to other persons." -- Martin Buber, _I and Thou_

    --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 22:25:44 +0000
             From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
             Subject: preservation of oral "literature"?

    Can anyone direct me (actually a friend who is interested in quecha
    specifically) to sources for discussion of the preservation of oral
    "literature" and other cultural forms such as music? I mean LONG TERM
    preservation of the sounds. Isn't this a terribly difficult problem? --
    because, I take it, there's no standard way to encode aural data digitally.
    And by "standard" I mean across decades or longer.

    What does one do when the only practical means for preservation is to make
    sure that the data (whatever that means) is transferred from one medium to
    the next as the former becomes obsolete?

    And does anyone know what happened to Systeme-D (which knew quecha)?

    Thanks.

    Yours,
    WM

    -----
    Dr Willard McCarty / Senior Lecturer /
    Centre for Computing in the Humanities / King's College London /
    Strand / London WC2R 2LS / U.K. /
    +44 (0)20 7848-2784 / ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/



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