tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post5706904977739395409..comments2011-04-25T10:30:06.350-04:00Comments on Wynken de Worde: democratizing early english booksSarah Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06941029918210770136noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-47144329844341316052009-10-06T06:43:32.499-04:002009-10-06T06:43:32.499-04:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Samhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05783665378557912867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-81002501439725639342009-05-14T03:27:00.000-04:002009-05-14T03:27:00.000-04:00i think dis is real easy 2 read wanc you no da dff...i think dis is real easy 2 read wanc you no da dffrint lettas, nuns priests tales probly my favrit chaucer, itz ironic approch 2 marital values at da tim iz pricelezz! itz grat hw humor thts 6-700 yers old is stil funy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-70830965111283052922009-03-02T16:32:00.000-05:002009-03-02T16:32:00.000-05:00Vaguery and DrRoy--thanks to both of you for your ...Vaguery and DrRoy--thanks to both of you for your thoughtful and thought-producing comments! I've been away for the past week, so please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to them. But if you'll look at my post today, you'll see that I follow up in part there.Sarah Wernerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06941029918210770136noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-16923755789619746172009-02-26T14:48:00.000-05:002009-02-26T14:48:00.000-05:00Tell me, which is easier to read, page images off ...Tell me, which is easier to read, page images off EEBO, or the transcribed texts created by the text creation partnership? My answer would tend to be the page images: the eye copes with a line of maybe 12 words: the text creation partnership transcripts run maybe 20 words or more across your browser. I get eye-slip all the time. Of course, for the sheer ease of getting a quotation into a document, I tend to read the transcription. But I often think I should revert to the page images.DrRoyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01351695058512676554noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-35795338853460792512009-02-22T09:38:00.000-05:002009-02-22T09:38:00.000-05:00Sad news: the value, I suspect, has little to do w...Sad news: the value, I suspect, has little to do with the kind of research <I>you</I> do. This is not at all a criticism of your research or the Humanities more generally, but an attempt to broaden your point of focus. Digitization and redistribution of these works will tend to undermine many academic assumptions of credentialling and merit. It will reduce barriers to access to these documents for non-academic scholars and the lay public... and all sorts of things might happen as a result.<BR/><BR/>I've been involved for several years with Distributed Proofreaders (ironically, the site is broken just now), and spent a tangible portion of my time attending and presenting at various Digital Humanities conferences. And yet I keep hearing and reading these concerns about digitization's inutility in the Practice of Scholarship and Pedagogy.<BR/><BR/>I have to shake my head, because I agree wholeheartedly but wonder why this is discussed. I doubt scanned books will be <I>any use at all</I> in teaching graduate classes or in proper archive-based research projects. They may save some scholars a few disappointments when they finally see the physical object, by showing a "preview" of the thing itself. (But really, what benighted professor would give up their sabbatical junket to a Great Library for archive research?)<BR/><BR/>But the texts you've tapped as "challenging" wouldn't faze the hundred blackletter specialists at Distributed Proofreaders; the marginalia would be sought out as a challenge by a dozen fans---for fun. While they might not talk about it aloud or explicitly, amateur volunteers are doing the required modeling of the document when they're planning and creating an authoritative transcribed electronic version. It happens as a matter of course.<BR/><BR/>And those thousands of volunteers doing the work at Distributed Proofreaders and allied sites are for the most part nonacademic, or academics from the "wrong" departments, or foreign, or retired. In my experience, none is as ignorant or ham-handed as a canonical undergraduate transcription intern. They are all volunteers, and for the most part <I>personally engaged</I> with the works, and discussing not just the technical aspects of production but their meaning and context.<BR/><BR/>Distributed Proofreaders is a test-case, and is often conflated with the egregious Gutenberg project to which it provides the majority of content. Project Gutenberg is full of junk, I admit. My point is that <A HREF="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Early_English_Text_Society_(Bookshelf)" REL="nofollow">some folks</A> have nonetheless the skill and interest to focus on just this sort of "difficult" text. And I'll argue they've exceeded the results of any official grant-funded Digital Humanities project.<BR/><BR/>It's as if the Academy has forgotten all about the antiquaries---the men who actually collected and saved these physical documents in the first place. The ones who published the 18th and 19th century magazines that fill my shelves with interminable discussions of inscriptions and editions and mysteries and local knowledge, and spent their middle-class disposable income having wood engraved reproductions made of their collections, and wrote these pedantic letters on local names, and filled innumerable miscellanies and folklores.<BR/><BR/>Those were poorly-trained folks, by modern standards; mere stamp collectors and dilettantes. But they saved the physical works, because they were either honestly interested in them or found some other social benefit in having them around. In the process they filled the bibliographies of properly trained academic scholars for many decades.<BR/><BR/>Mind you, this isn't a personal criticism. My point is: the walls of scholarship have coincided with the University's bounds for a tiny fraction of "scholarship"'s existence. I can attest---having just paid my $380 annual fee for the <I>privilege</I> of dragging my butt downtown and sitting at a low-grade computer in a campus library so I can swear at the stupid EEBO scans or read JSTOR's precious license-protected 19th century <I>public domain</I> journals (without being permitted to save or print them)---I can attest there are still real people out here that folks inside the monstery walls who find utility in these scans. :)<BR/><BR/>As I said, I've been to too many Digital Humanities conferences through the last few years. I can't personally put faith in the transformative power of any project now extant, inside or out of the Academy. I have yet to see a well-designed project that opens access to real people, regardless of their authority, and which doesn't try to recoup some imaginary "cost" by charging for things in the public domain.<BR/><BR/>But... well, let's just say there are some cultural surprises lined up in the coming years. Not to mention a good deal of utility to be recaptured.Vagueryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13410026802332846187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-62381861981733752992009-02-16T15:17:00.000-05:002009-02-16T15:17:00.000-05:00Thanks for this really thoughtful comment, Jonatha...Thanks for this really thoughtful comment, Jonathan. I do think that digital access (like what the Folger is starting to provide) has the potential to change what sorts of research we can do. Nothing is ever going to replace going to the book itself, but this could potentially make it much easier to sense what books are worth visiting for what purposes. As you point out, the Folger's catalogue does not mention what sort of annotations are in the book (although the fact that the record reveals the presence of any annotation is itself a huge step up over lots of other catalogues--so big props to the Folger cataloguers for that!). It's only when we look at the image of the book that we begin to see the ways in which this user shaped how this tale could be understood. (And, as you point out, that starts to get at an interesting exploration of the relationship between user and text.) <BR/><BR/>I do like this as an example of the value of <B>looking at</B> books and digital images, especially after your great additions to my sense of what is going on with it. But not everyone who looks at this is going to be able to do something with it. So here's the question for those of us who teach these texts and who would like to be teaching <B>books</B> of these texts: to what use can we put these digital images? What sorts of frameworks can we provide to help them be of use to others? And then how do we make sure that these texts and frames are found in order to be used?Sarah Wernerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06941029918210770136noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640125206110669026.post-50334578983305847572009-02-16T13:03:00.000-05:002009-02-16T13:03:00.000-05:00I read these past two postings with great interest...I read these past two postings with great interest. Your caveat (in response to Darnton) that "access does not mean understanding" is well taken. Perhaps the alterity or "foreign-ness" of early printed books simply highlights that reading *never* occurs in a vacuum; even if you are face-to-face with a text as a solitary reader you can't make any sense of it unless you've gained (through previous reading, your own experience, classroom settings, etc.) some idea of its context, aims, conventions, etc.<BR/><BR/>What I appreciate about digitalization projects like those at the Folger is precisely the wider access they provide - a digital image allows you not only to read a text but to *look at it* as well, picking up on what it transmits in addition to its "content."<BR/><BR/>For example, the catalog entry for this wonderful final image notes there's "marginalia" at this point in the NPT - but it does not say any more about what that actually entails. It's only when you gain access to the text (see the physical layout of the page) that you get some sense of how an early reader engages with the text.<BR/><BR/>It does strike me as very interesting how this reader "frames" the text to come. At the end of the NPT the narrator claims he's not just telling a fable about "a cock and a hen" - it's potentially a philosophical debate, moral allegory, conversation about marital roles, etc. In characterizing the NPT as the tale "of the cok and the fox," this annotator conditions readers to access this text in a very particular way (as an Aesopian fable) - a narrower reading that largely ignores what the narrator states about the tale itself.Jonathan Hsyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13214201468052661183noreply@blogger.com