I am in agreement with Barbara. Digital editions of manuscripts such as the Exeter Book, Beowulf, Junius, etc. cannot be made free. Even if people wanted to make the manuscripts free it would be not be cost effective to do so. If Bernard Muir had to come all the way from Australia to England just to photograph the book for free it would be a total waste of money for him. Also, the money it takes to photograph the book then have a team of professionals put it together is not a one person task. Even to write the code to make the program work is too complicated for a single person to do. There are many other costs I am sure that I am not counting, but just these alone would amount to a pretty significant number.
Actually, if you consider the cost of the MSS in color compared to a facs. that you may find that it is well worth the price. I mean the digital Junius MS is priced very well for the quality. If you consider the size of the Exeter Book compared to the Junius MS then you will also know that the Exeter Book is priced fairly well too.
I guess you just have to consider that buying the CD is actually saying Thanks to Bernard Muir and everyone else who took the time to complete the project. Additionally, you can consider it as helping them complete the project with your own personal contribution to pay for the airfare, salaries, food, and anything else that they spent money on.
Abdullah
----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara Bordalejo" bb268@nyu.edu To: "Digital Medievalist Community mailing list" dm-l@uleth.ca Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 5:06 PM Subject: Re: [dm-l] Re: Exeter Book CD: for free?
Digital Medievalist Journal (Inaugural Issue Fall 2004). Call for papers:
http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/cfp.htm
I am sorry to have to say this, but why do people assume that because a
book is in electronic format it should be free? I find it very strange than even those familiar with the work that goes into electronic publications would suggest that it should be free of charge.
The site about Open Access referred to by Klaus is clearly intended for
journals and similar publications, not for works as the Exeter CD. Indeed, I cannot imagine approaching Andy Orchard, for example, and saying, "I always wanted to buy _Pride and Prodigies_, but it is too expensive, could I have it for free?" This is the kind of publication we are talking about, not articles in journals; but incredibly complex publications that, more often than not, require the cooperation of a team of people.
Those who think that publishing on the internet is free should take into
account costs such as maintenance and upgrading. Someone has to care for the texts on the internet for these to remain available. In some cases, without university support, a private individual will even have to pay for the space on the internet.
Of course we all want more access to primary materials and libraries are
doing a good job digitizing their books, making them available and maintaining the sites. We should be happy that we can count on this and stop trying to get everything for free.
Best,
Barbara Bordalejo
----- Original Message ----- From: Klaus Graf klaus.graf@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de Date: Monday, July 19, 2004 4:20 pm Subject: [dm-l] Re: Exeter Book CD
Digital Medievalist Journal (Inaugural Issue Fall 2004). Call for papers: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/cfp.htm
In my opinion an Open Acess web page with the digitized Exter book in reasonable quality would be better than any CD.
Klaus Graf
PS: What is Open Access: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
Project web site: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ dm-l mailing list dm-l@uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Project web site: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ dm-l mailing list dm-l@uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l