17.568 the KWIC and the sheep

From: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jan 27 2004 - 03:43:04 EST


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               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 568.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu

   [1] From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> (16)
         Subject: KWIC

   [2] From: Don Nugent <nugent@hal-pc.org> (2)
         Subject: Re: 17.433 baa baa black sheep

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         Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:34:45 +0000
         From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
         Subject: KWIC

I was so pleased to see the name of one of my heroes, Joe Raben.
He once said, BTW, in speaking of concordances: "The very
technology that has made possible more and better concordances will
very soon be responsible for their death." "The Death of the
Handmade Concordance," Scholarly Publishing 1 (1969), p. 69. Too
bad this prediction hasn't yet come true (I am at this moment
reviewing a recently-published KWIC concordance). I have yet to
meet anyone who uses a KWIC concordance, though I can see making
one (they are quick and easy) while working on a text.
Concordances themselves are hard enough to use, even if done by
Cruden or Lane Cooper, but a KWIC concordance ... I wonder how many
people out there even use concordances of any type, e. g. the
Shakespeare Concordance. I just conducted a scientific survey by
asking all those I encountered in our Foreign Language Building,
and found that none of them did, and that 10 out of the 12 I met
did not know exactly what one was (all of professorial rank).

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         Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:36:29 +0000
         From: Don Nugent <nugent@hal-pc.org>
         Subject: Re: 17.433 baa baa black sheep

Check the web site at the URL address:

    http://www.sca.org.au/bacchus_wood/origins_of_nursery_rhymes.html
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