Dear all,

Scholarly Digital Editing? I've just published three volumes on this topic:
    http://www.i-d-e.de/schriften/s7-9-digitale-editionsformen

rough translation of titles:
    Digital Scholarly Editing
        Part I: The legacy of typography
        Part II: Survey, theory and methodology
        Part III: Notions of text and textual encoding

- the distinction between digitized and digital scholarly editions (DSE) is an important aspect in the definition of scholarly digital editions (SDE); see most recently http://prezi.com/mdt8efbe3o3a/patrick-sahle-what-is-a-scholarly-digital-edition/ (hope to elaborate on that in a forthcoming article); the main point here is, that there is a fundamental paradigm shift in thinking the scholarly edition in a typographic setting or in a digital information environment

- should we make a distinction between digital scholarly editions (DSE) and scholarly digital editions (SDE) ?
    - yes, because it describes two different processes or at least different accentuations
        - DSE emphasizes that we still follow the idea of scholarly editing but transform it to the digital world
        - SDE emphasizes the relation to other forms of digital publishing which are augmented by the dimension of scholarly criticism
    - no, because it should lead to the same results: editions that are truly scholarly AND truly digital

- is the edition its content or its presentation?
    - if the presentation is arbitrarily generated from underlying data, then it has some logic to say, that the data is the edition. On the other hand this would not fit well to the common notion of an "edition" as some form of publication. I think, a SDE must comprise both: the data and some form of publication of that data. What constitutes a particular edition is the definition of its subject together with a personal or institutional creatorship (or responsibility). Edition of X by Y. The edition may then have different forms of presentation (online, print, eBook, relaunched online version after some time), which may also be "versions".

- do we really have a problem with the acceptance of digital editions?
    - first, I take up, what Andrew wrote...
        - "Compared to a printed book, they're miserable to read, since they tend to be designed first for technical analysis, and any attention to typography is typically a very low priority"
            - I'm not sure whether I'd agree on that. I find most SDEs quite readable. But yes, we're still in the incunabula age of digital texts. Good digital typography still has to evolve. Anyway, I'call a lot of the editions listed in my catalog "readable": http://digitale-edition.de/
        - "There's no guarantee in many cases that citations made from digital editions will be stable."
            - but this is a known problem which we discuss for at least ten years now. And the solutions are quite clear: PID/PURL-systems, fine granularity of adressable objects in editions, institutional committments for the long-term support of SDE, versioning etc etc
        - "It's far easier to put a good printed edition together than a good digital edition, especially because of the lack of standard, user-friendly tools."
            - true, but the underlying problem is that SDEs are far more complex than tradional edition (as regards content, methods, technical aspects) - and that's why generic tools are so hard to build

- "There is no standard way of presenting online critical editions (whereas most printed texts are published in series that follow a style guide)."
- important point that the community has to address; but I see these publications series coming up; just some arbitrary examples: http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/ - http://www.sd-editions.com/index.html - http://www.hab.de/de/home/bibliothek/digitale-bibliothek-wdb/digitale-editionen.html - http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/

        - "Delving into academic politics, publishers hate them and many universities don't count digital projects toward tenure."
            - traditional publishers will not solve the problems of SDEs
            - academic interest groups are starting to deal with the problem of credibility of digital work (the German Historians Union has just set up a working group on digital scholarship with a subgroup on crediting digital work in tenure and promotion)
    - second: success on the reader's side can only be measured in comparison to the success of traditional printed editions. In comparison to the fact that those often had an extremly low circulation, were bought nearly exclusively by libraries ....
    - third: success on the side of the editors. We had 6 summer schools on scholarly digital editing in the last 5 years (http://www.i-d-e.de/events-des-ide). All have been overbooked. I see fewer and fewer newly starting edition projects that don't have a digital component or basis. There is some pressure from the funding bodies, that new projects and new editions have to be digital. But change takes some time.

Best, Patrick

Am 13.03.2013 21:01, schrieb Dot Porter: