Dear List,
I posted this message to the AnsaxNet listserv yesterday (as part of a thread about, well, digital editing), but I think it really belongs here. I'm quick to point out there is nothing here that is really new or that no-one has said before, but I like thinking about it it such concrete terms. Thoughts?
Dot
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My own vision of the future of digital editions depends first on all data (text and images) being released under Open Access licenses, allowing for reuse and repurposing of that data (with acknowledgment given to those involved in the development of that data), and second on the continuing innovation in technologies (open-source and non) for working with that data - interfaces, visualizations, search engines, etc. etc.
In my ideal future, one day I'll release a little edition of a text from manuscript Y. Because I have limited time, I'll just show the text and pages facing one another. I'm really interested in the paleography of this particular manuscript, so I'll take special care to mark all the special scribal elements in the TEI, give users the option to view those, and I'll include a separate paleographical description as well.
Two years from then, another scholar interested in the text from manuscript Y creates an edition of that text, comparing the readings from manuscript Y with those from mss L and Q. He'll use the transcriptions I made for manuscript Y as the basis for his other transcriptions and will include the images from my edition as well. He's not so interested in paleography, so he'll ignore that code and he won't include it for the other manuscripts. His edition only has the images for mss Y and Q, though - he wasn't able to afford those for ms L (yes, in my future libraries still charge a lot for images unfortunately - although they are happy to have them posted online). Since I released my edition a new open-source interface was released that makes it easier to view textual variants, so this scholar presents his edition through that interface. He includes my original license statement and acknowledges the portion of the data he is repurposing.
The next year, images for ms L become available and are plugged into this edition.
The next year, a new editing tool becomes available (open source) that enables the automated linking of lines of encoded text with lines from manuscript images. Another scholar takes the data from the latest version of the edition and runs everything through this tool. He is also interested in paleography, so adds paleographic encoding to the transcriptions for mss L and Q. When he releases his own edition (using one of the three interfaces available to work specifically with linked image and text), he includes license statements and acknowledgments for all data he's incorporated from the earlier editions. He presents this new edition through an interface provided by the editing tool developers - but the interface is commercial and he has to pay a license fee (they have to make their money somewhere; even so, eight months from now an open-source interface is released that can also present the links, and it's even better than the one provided by the tool developers).
Now, four years after I released my little edition, there are three very different editions available dealing with rather different aspects of the text, each building on and adding to the last. I didn't anticipate any of this when I put out my edition - I only did what I wanted to do, and trusted that those who came after me would add what they need. I also trusted that they would respect my license and acknowledge my original work.
There are still questions of course - four years later, will my lovely simple and standard code still run on the same browsers, or will someone (probably not me - I've moved on by this point) need to do something to keep it running? One could argue it's a moot point, though, as my project has essentially been incorporated into these other projects. That is, the data from my projects is there; the original interface and methods for working with that data will probably be different. But then, if someone finds the existing interfaces unreasonable for their own use, they are free to take my data and feed them through any available interface or visualization system. In my future, programming experience is not required.
Ten years later, computers have changed entirely. The browsers and other interfaces that ran these editions six years ago don't work on today's computers. We'll need to build new browsers and new interfaces - but that's all we need to do, because the edition data is standard and expected. We just need to build them and plug that data in.
It's possible this sounds crazy, and it does require that editors be willing to release their editorial data under Open Access licenses. I honestly don't know if this is reasonable, but it would be the ideal. It also requires that all this editorial data be encoded using the same standards. This isn't so much of an issue, as pretty much all serious scholarly editions are currently encoded in some flavour of TEI. And it won't be *easy*, it will take community involvement and, of course, people willing to build those interfaces and visualization tools. But there are already digital humanities scholars and programmers working on that... I think with cooperation it could be done. If I'm not the only person who would want something like this.