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-editi... ) 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
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Not to forget of course the problem of accessibility and longevity. If digital editions are indeed defined by the fact that they exploit the possibilities of digital media, then it is problematic to say the least that we have not really solved the issue that our current digital editions are very much tied to particular versions of software/operating systems/browers/devices.
It is not enough that we can say that the underlying data is safe because it is encoded in formats that will last (like XML TEI), because I don’t think we can say the same for the functionality which we build on top of our data. Unless one has both the technical skill and the resources to keep updating the interface and architecture of one’s online editions there will come a point in the not so distant future when things will stop working and all we are left with are the data.
Godfried Croenen
From: dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca [mailto:dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca] On Behalf Of Andrew Dunning Sent: 14 March 2013 19:57 To: Digital Medievalist Subject: Re: [dm-l] New article on "Medievalists and the Scholarly Digital Edition"
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.itmailto: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-editi...) 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
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.orghttp://digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.camailto:dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Not to forget of course the problem of accessibility and longevity. If digital editions are indeed defined by the fact that they exploit the possibilities of digital media, then it is problematic to say the least that we have not really solved the issue that our current digital editions are very much tied to particular versions of software/operating systems/browers/devices.
It is not enough that we can say that the underlying data is safe because it is encoded in formats that will last (like XML TEI), because I don’t think we can say the same for the functionality which we build on top of our data. Unless one has both the technical skill and the resources to keep updating the interface and architecture of one’s online editions there will come a point in the not so distant future when things will stop working and all we are left with are the data.
I'm tempted to answer that the data *is* the edition, and that the presentation software's task is to "extract" it from the data so that the user can view it, but of course that's only a technicality and you're right: in the end, how the data is presented to the user is what matters, and of course if that isn't possible anymore from the user's point of view there's no edition at all (and I wouldn't really disagree).
Fortunately there's a push to use open standards not only in creating the edition data (TEI XML), but also in visualizing it: the fact that almost all new digital editions are 100% web-based makes it sort of inevitable, although there are catches. I will be attending this workshop next month:
http://easytools.huygens.knaw.nl/?page_id=18
and one of the points I'll try to make is that we have several layers of software involved when creating an edition browsing tool: open standards like (X)HTML+CSS, which might be considered as safe as TEI XML when it comes to longevity; open source "de facto" standards such as the jQuery library, which are so widespread that they will forcefully retain compatibility for the foreseeable future; open source software like eXist; and a lively, somewhat wild open source small programs developed on the basis of the above (f.i. jQuery plugins). In my own edition viewing software I'm trying[1] to stay on top of this stack as much as possible, and going "down" only when absolutely necessary (f.i. using a plugin when the jQuery library doesn't allow a specific functionality). It's a tricky balance you want to have between standard compliance and sophisticated features, some of the latter being expected in a modern digital edition.
R
[1] More precisely, the talented young developers doing the actual development are trying to do that, since I can barely program my TV recorder XD
Hi Roberto,
While there are many things you said I heartily share, I disagree when you said that the "data is the edition" and that the role of the software is only to extract data to present it to the user. I think there is as much scholarship in the interface as there is on the data, in particular if we use standards such the TEI that allow us to encode the same things in different ways (abbreviations and expansion, errors and corrections, etc.): the way we select these features and the way we present them tells loads about our vision and understanding of the text and have enormous consequences in the reception and impact of our scholarship. This, of course, makes things more complex as we are bound to preserve the data and the interfaces…
Getting back to the main object of the thread which was generated by Dot's excellent article: I don't think people don't use digital scholarly editions because they may disappear any day soon, I think they do not because we -- the editors -- have organised them around what we want to do with them, and have forgotten to ask the readers what they want instead. People read on screen all the time: Kindles and iPad and the eBook market boom shows this very clearly, they simply don't read scholarly editions on the web. I think there is a reflection to be had here on the way we deliver our scholarship and on the centrality of our interfaces. Thanks again to Dot for drawing our attention to this.
Best Elena
On 15 Mar 2013, at 09:19, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco rosselli@ling.unipi.it wrote:
Not to forget of course the problem of accessibility and longevity. If digital editions are indeed defined by the fact that they exploit the possibilities of digital media, then it is problematic to say the least that we have not really solved the issue that our current digital editions are very much tied to particular versions of software/operating systems/browers/devices.
It is not enough that we can say that the underlying data is safe because it is encoded in formats that will last (like XML TEI), because I don’t think we can say the same for the functionality which we build on top of our data. Unless one has both the technical skill and the resources to keep updating the interface and architecture of one’s online editions there will come a point in the not so distant future when things will stop working and all we are left with are the data.
I'm tempted to answer that the data *is* the edition, and that the presentation software's task is to "extract" it from the data so that the user can view it, but of course that's only a technicality and you're right: in the end, how the data is presented to the user is what matters, and of course if that isn't possible anymore from the user's point of view there's no edition at all (and I wouldn't really disagree).
Fortunately there's a push to use open standards not only in creating the edition data (TEI XML), but also in visualizing it: the fact that almost all new digital editions are 100% web-based makes it sort of inevitable, although there are catches. I will be attending this workshop next month:
http://easytools.huygens.knaw.nl/?page_id=18
and one of the points I'll try to make is that we have several layers of software involved when creating an edition browsing tool: open standards like (X)HTML+CSS, which might be considered as safe as TEI XML when it comes to longevity; open source "de facto" standards such as the jQuery library, which are so widespread that they will forcefully retain compatibility for the foreseeable future; open source software like eXist; and a lively, somewhat wild open source small programs developed on the basis of the above (f.i. jQuery plugins). In my own edition viewing software I'm trying[1] to stay on top of this stack as much as possible, and going "down" only when absolutely necessary (f.i. using a plugin when the jQuery library doesn't allow a specific functionality). It's a tricky balance you want to have between standard compliance and sophisticated features, some of the latter being expected in a modern digital edition.
R
[1] More precisely, the talented young developers doing the actual development are trying to do that, since I can barely program my TV recorder XD
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Elena Pierazzo Lecturer in Digital Humanities Department in Digital Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL
Phone: 0207-848-1949 Fax: 0207-848-2980 elena.pierazzo@kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh
Just chiming in to say that I'm glad my article has led to such a hearty discussion. Unfortunately today is my last day at my current job (sniff!) and I'll be on the road for two weeks before I start my new job at Penn on April 1. But I look forward to reading more discussion on the list, and I hope to be able to join in once things calm down :-)
Dot
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 6:36 AM, Pierazzo, Elena elena.pierazzo@kcl.ac.ukwrote:
Hi Roberto,
While there are many things you said I heartily share, I disagree when you said that the "data is the edition" and that the role of the software is only to extract data to present it to the user. I think there is as much scholarship in the interface as there is on the data, in particular if we use standards such the TEI that allow us to encode the same things in different ways (abbreviations and expansion, errors and corrections, etc.): the way we select these features and the way we present them tells loads about our vision and understanding of the text and have enormous consequences in the reception and impact of our scholarship. This, of course, makes things more complex as we are bound to preserve the data and the interfaces…
Getting back to the main object of the thread which was generated by Dot's excellent article: I don't think people don't use digital scholarly editions because they may disappear any day soon, I think they do not because we -- the editors -- have organised them around what we want to do with them, and have forgotten to ask the readers what they want instead. People read on screen all the time: Kindles and iPad and the eBook market boom shows this very clearly, they simply don't read scholarly editions on the web. I think there is a reflection to be had here on the way we deliver our scholarship and on the centrality of our interfaces. Thanks again to Dot for drawing our attention to this.
Best Elena
On 15 Mar 2013, at 09:19, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco < rosselli@ling.unipi.it> wrote:
Not to forget of course the problem of accessibility and longevity. If digital editions are indeed defined by the fact that they exploit the possibilities of digital media, then it is problematic to say the least that we have not really solved the issue that our current digital
editions
are very much tied to particular versions of software/operating systems/browers/devices.
It is not enough that we can say that the underlying data is safe
because
it is encoded in formats that will last (like XML TEI), because I don’t think we can say the same for the functionality which we build on top of our data. Unless one has both the technical skill and the resources to keep updating the interface and architecture of one’s online editions there will come a point in the not so distant future when things will
stop
working and all we are left with are the data.
I'm tempted to answer that the data *is* the edition, and that the presentation software's task is to "extract" it from the data so that the user can view it, but of course that's only a technicality and you're right: in the end, how the data is presented to the user is what matters, and of course if that isn't possible anymore from the user's point of
view
there's no edition at all (and I wouldn't really disagree).
Fortunately there's a push to use open standards not only in creating the edition data (TEI XML), but also in visualizing it: the fact that almost all new digital editions are 100% web-based makes it sort of inevitable, although there are catches. I will be attending this workshop next month:
http://easytools.huygens.knaw.nl/?page_id=18
and one of the points I'll try to make is that we have several layers of software involved when creating an edition browsing tool: open standards like (X)HTML+CSS, which might be considered as safe as TEI XML when it comes to longevity; open source "de facto" standards such as the jQuery library, which are so widespread that they will forcefully retain compatibility for the foreseeable future; open source software like
eXist;
and a lively, somewhat wild open source small programs developed on the basis of the above (f.i. jQuery plugins). In my own edition viewing software I'm trying[1] to stay on top of this stack as much as possible, and going "down" only when absolutely necessary (f.i. using a plugin when the jQuery library doesn't allow a specific functionality). It's a tricky balance you want to have between standard compliance and sophisticated features, some of the latter being expected in a modern digital edition.
R
[1] More precisely, the talented young developers doing the actual development are trying to do that, since I can barely program my TV recorder XD
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Dr Elena Pierazzo Lecturer in Digital Humanities Department in Digital Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL
Phone: 0207-848-1949 Fax: 0207-848-2980 elena.pierazzo@kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/digitalmedieval Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gidI320313760 Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Il 15/03/2013 15:29, Dot Porter ha scritto:
Just chiming in to say that I'm glad my article has led to such a hearty discussion. Unfortunately today is my last day at my current job (sniff!) and I'll be on the road for two weeks before I start my new job at Penn on April 1. But I look forward to reading more discussion on the list, and I hope to be able to join in once things calm down :-)
Hehe, thanks for the article and hope we'll hear from you soon ;)
R
Il 15/03/2013 11:36, Pierazzo, Elena ha scritto:
Hi Roberto,
While there are many things you said I heartily share, I disagree when you said that the "data is the edition" and that the role of the software is only to extract data to present it to the user. I think there is as much scholarship in the interface as there is on the data, in particular if we use standards such the TEI that allow us to encode the same things in different ways (abbreviations and expansion, errors and corrections, etc.): the way we select these features and the way we present them tells loads about our vision and understanding of the text and have enormous consequences in the reception and impact of our scholarship. This, of course, makes things more complex as we are bound to preserve the data and the interfaces…
I think it was quite clear mine was a provocation of sort.
Getting back to the main object of the thread which was generated by Dot's excellent article: I don't think people don't use digital scholarly editions because they may disappear any day soon, I think they do not because we -- the editors -- have organised them around what we want to do with them, and have forgotten to ask the readers what they want instead. People read on screen all the time: Kindles and iPad and the eBook market boom shows this very clearly, they simply don't read scholarly editions on the web. I think there is a reflection to be had here on the way we deliver our scholarship and on the centrality of our interfaces. Thanks again to Dot for drawing our attention to this.
There are *many* reasons why digital scholarly editions aren't used as much as we'd like, lack of proper user feedback (and, as a consequence, lack of easy to use interfaces) is just one of them. The problem is that with Kindle/iPad/tablets in general ebooks have found a suitable medium, the same wasn't and still isn't true with digital editions + browsing software + computer monitors (unless you shift focus from "reading" to "consultation", than they're more than fit for the purpose). Getting the software "right" for a computer is an order of magnitude more difficult than writing an ebook reading software, doing so for a tablet will be even more difficult I'm afraid. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't start looking into it, on the contrary.
R
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Andrew Dunning -
Croenen, Godfried -
Dot Porter -
Pierazzo, Elena -
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco