[tei-council] PR for TEI in Google Books (was Re: some brief reports to save time during our upcoming conf call)

[Gabriel Bodard]

For what it's worth, although Council may not have reached a conclusion, 
I am very much in favour of preparing to publicize this event.

Even in the worst-case scenario where the TEI produced by Google is 
really really bad (or contains bad OCR), the fact that TEI is a format 
chosen to encode many many thousands of public domain texts is something 
that we can and should make a loud noise about. (And even if it's so 
bad, (a) that isn't our fault, and (b) hopefully someone will work to 
improve it.)

In short: +1

G

On 2012-03-05 03:45, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
> On 2/28/12 2:11 PM, Stuart A. Yeates wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 1:12 PM, Kevin Hawkins
>> <kevin.s.hawkins at ultraslavonic.info>   wrote:
>>> = Google Books =
>>> The importance of this for the TEI's PR can't really be understated.
>>> We, or the Board, might want to give some thought about whether to do
>>> anything more once Google deloys this code than simply announce it on
>>> TEI-L with shouts of hurrah/hooray/huzzah.
>>
>> I think it might be productive to have a few paragraphs contrasting
>> TEI texts and underlying openness to the closed and propriety nature
>> of formats currently in use by Amazon and OverDrive.
>>
>> I'm happy to write these, maybe with Kevin giving me some feedback?
>>
>> cheers
>> stuart
>
> I believe the teleconference discussion did not reach a conclusion on
> whether, once Google deploys their code, the TEI-C should (a) ride a way
> of publicity that might be generated in the community, (b) seek to
> create a wave, or (c) do nothing.  In any case, I plan to act as a
> private citizen (not in my role as a Council member) in publicizing this
> since I personally believe it's significant, even if Google turns out
> TEI files that many of us think aren't all that usable.
>
> But in the case of (a) or (b), it would be good to have a text drafted
> by Stuart and me, with input from the rest of you, ready for when the
> appointed hour arrives.  However, I don't know who should make an
> official statement on behalf of the TEI-C.  Perhaps we don't need an
> official statement: instead, someone posts their own private
> announcement to TEI-L and then it gets added to the news feed on
> www.tei-c.org.  Pretty soon it gets tweeted and then picked up by
> Digital Humanities Now, ProfHacker, the Times (London and New York),
> CNN, Fox News, Sky News, and of course the Sunday Sun, in which Mr.
> Murdoch is no doubt anxious to promote an open, non-proprietary format
> for interchange of digital text!
>
> --Kevin

-- 
Dr Gabriel BODARD
(Research Associate in Digital Epigraphy)

Department of Digital Humanities
King's College London
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL

Email: gabriel.bodard at kcl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388
Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980

http://www.digitalclassicist.org/
http://www.currentepigraphy.org/