I really enjoyed this paper as well. I think it's pretty obvious why digital editions are not more popular with both authors and readers, some of which are touched on in the article:

- 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. (Granted, this is a problem with most e-books.)

- There's no guarantee in many cases that citations made from digital editions will be stable.

- 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.
- There is no standard way of presenting online critical editions (whereas most printed texts are published in series that follow a style guide).

- Delving into academic politics, publishers hate them and many universities don't count digital projects toward tenure.

None of these problems are insurmountable, and most have been tackled already by someone, but I'm really looking forward to a solution that at least tackles the technical aspects of these problems.

Andrew Dunning
PhD Student, Collaborative Program in Editing Medieval Texts
Centre for Medieval Studies
University of Toronto

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli@ling.unipi.it> wrote:

> Dot, what a very good job! I am only a bit surprised that we are not
> making steady progress towards some goal -- that's not really the wqy
> human beings do things -- but it is a litttle disconcerting to think that
> while more and more people are doing digital or difitized editions (I
> agree with that very ueful distinction), users of editions seem ro remain
> happy with print. If I were younger (I was there at Hoyt's PP/SEENET
> paper). I might try to think of some kind of campaign, but perhaps it's
> best to let things develop as they will ?

I took part to a workshop about digital scholarly edition organized by
NeDiMAH last November
(http://www.nedimah.eu/call-for-papers/expert-meeting-digital-scholarly-editions)
and gave a paper titled "The battle we forgot to fight: Should we make a
case for digital editions?". In short, no, I think we should definitely
advocate creation and use of digital editions ... but also that first we
should define more clearly what a digital edition *is*, see Dot's
distinction above as a starting point (there surely are many other types
and sub-types). Personally I think we lack a clear perspective and need a
sort of "DEI" (Digital Edition Initiative) that can help interested
scholars with support, guidelines etc. (also help gather together,
conferences like ESTS and such are very useful, but we lack a "central"
place where to go).

R

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