Text Editing, Print and the Digital World

Citation

Urquhart, C. (2009), "Text Editing, Print and the Digital World", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 65 No. 6, pp. 1020-1023. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410910998988

This is the 13th volume in the series Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities. These publications originate in the work of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK) ICT Methods Network. This volume is concerned with digital text editing, from the perspective of the textual scholars, literary scholars, the general reader, those involved in the production process, and those responsible for preservation of the editions. Part I deals with the theoretical aspects, Part II discusses some of the experiences of those involved in different text editing projects.

The first chapter discusses whether the facilities apparently offered by digital media are serving useful or desirable purposes. What is the purpose of a digital facsimile, how many technical contortions were required to reach that facsimile, and are the readers prepared to treat it with the same respect they might extend to the original? The problem may be deciding what should be regarded as the authoritative original, if this exists at all. If resources are limited, as they usually are, and the scholarly audience small, as it usually is, there are choices to be made between efforts made to store and display variants of texts, the textual “laboratory”, and efforts to provide a stable reading text that is accepted as the basis for scholarly critique. And perhaps paper is the best medium for that, given the difficulties in updating the hardware and software for dealing with electronic texts. Mats Dahlström (chapter 2) examines the function of the scholarly edition, which may be as bibliographical tool, as icon, media translation, scientific tool, rhetorical tool (stressing the situatedness of any scholarly edition), and reproductive tool. The activities around document mark‐up bring in other subtle and less subtle problems. Dino Buzzetti, in chapter 3 explains how the addition of punctuation to a medieval text (internal markup) in effects becomes part of the expression of the text and a construct of its object language. (Figure 3.1, incidentally is reversed from the description in the text). The same punctuation mark may also be regarded as a syntax rule, producing part of the metalanguage. Seemingly small changes have big consequences.

Paul Eggert (chapter 4) examines reasons for not doing electronic editions, citing his experience in editing short stories by an Australian writer, whose work existed in one or more newspaper printings, which were then revised for book publication. Engaging with the routines of Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) encoding was not worth the effort if the general reader was better served with a digital facsimile with some covering information. He suggests that the technique of Just‐In‐Time‐Markup (JITM), which separates the digital information (content) from the markup works better for many purposes, with a minimal definition of the text restricted to the ISO‐646 character set. With the JITM system, the work site is a text construction site for the editor and expert reader. Dealings with text can accumulate, and become part of the scholarly communication process over time. Gabriel Bodard and Juan Garcés discuss whether open source critical editions are actually anything new. The communal nature of criticism is important, the purpose of the footnote should be preserved, as well the decisions that led to the text as it is presented. Edward Vanhoutte (chapter 6) takes this discussion one step further by asking very practical and pertinent questions about the needs of the audience. As he points out, the audience for scholarly editions is “ill defined and generally over‐estimated”. Perhaps the aim of the electronic edition should be a maximal edition that allows the scholar reader to generate the text of their choice with access to the choices made around the textual archive. They may therefore generate the minimal version of their choice.

In Part 2, some case studies illustrate some of the problems, opportunities and actions taken in recent projects. Espen Ore (chapter 7) proposes that editorial projects look towards a future that could see several institutions involved in different versions or sections of editions, but national libraries and archives will be responsible for the archives of texts or facsimiles. One of the Norwegian projects described was that of the Diriks scrapbooks, which had complex data structures to be considered, but the overall structure of the complex scrapbooks, with text and images, is preserved, with searching possible via the stored metadata about the objects. The work of commentary and linking for editions requires considerable resources in terms of time, and a Wikipedia approach is possible, but some quality control (by a National Library) is recommended. In chapter 8, Linda Bree and James McLaverty also advocate the need for a definition of the canon in their discussion of the production of the Cambridge Edition of the works of Jonathan Swift. The problem, of course, is less in the presentation of the archive, with the variant text supplementing the print edition, but in the responsibility for maintenance of the electronic archive.

James Mussell and Suzanne Paylor (chapter 9) discuss the production of the Nineteenth Century Serials Edition – is it worthwhile to concentrate on the features that establish these periodicals as a publishing genre? Charlotte Roueché (chapter 10) discusses experiences with digitization of inscribed texts and the Epidoc Aphrodisias Project. One major problem that emerged with this was acceptance of the product for cataloguing. Given the Dan Brown effect – the production of many inaccurate websites about ancient history – the need for verified authenticity is very necessary. Elena Pierazzo (chapter 11) discusses how time is encoded in manuscript transcription, distinguishing between the requirements of diplomatic transcription (reproduction of the appearance), linear transcription (emphasis on readable version) and timed transcription (emphasis on the process of production, the moments of correction and deletion). Recent developments in TEI make the third type of transcription easier now, though it is important to distinguish between representation of the normal process of writing, or the choices between different versions of the same text. Nevertheless, this is not a process for the unwary.

At various points in the volume, reference is made to the division of labour between the work concerned with bibliography and textual criticism. Perhaps, as one of the contributors suggests, bibliographies and scholarly editions are positioned on different points on a line from reference to referent. The edition refers but also displays, becoming a referent. The emphasis of the bibliography is reference. Analytical bibliography may be considered to encompass historical bibliography (history of the production, history of the form), textual bibliography (textual criticism) and descriptive bibliography (close physical description of the book) (Belanger, 1977). This book on digital editing deals mostly with the way the physical descriptions and appearances of text may or may not be represented in digital editions, and whether that matters, from the perspective of the textual critic, and the editor who is concerned with collection and collation of the work. Study of some aspects of analytical bibliography has been included in some librarianship, or documentation courses, but it is probably fair to say that in the UK, the research and courses are now found in English departments – or Classics departments for the study of ancient texts. It has seemed a very esoteric interest, although a wander through the major bookstores will often reveal a section that contain the “ancient conspiracy theory” books that combine considerable speculation with a detective storyline, and a little archaeology (not necessarily accurate) and some bibliography (not necessarily accurate). Some of the contributors to the volume refer to the possibility that the digitization of some of the materials could be available to the general reader, but it seems that the market for products based on, and around the scholarly editions has not been explored fully. Unfortunately, as many of the contributors attest, this means that funding for the digitization projects, in particular providing continued access, remains problematic. Some popularization might provide some money, but it is quite understandable that no scholarly editor wishes to have their work placed next to the conspiracy theorists in the bookstores. Although the public should not be so gullible as to accept without question the views of the conspiracy theorists as set out in convincing (or not so convincing) storylines, what remains true is that the composition of the canon is always open to debate. This is most obvious in some accounts of the forgeries, discoveries, faked discoveries, and suppression of some of the early Christian texts (see Ehrman, 2003, for a fascinating though highly scholarly account).

This book on text editing should be of interest to those concerned with rare books librarianship, and archives. Perhaps the common thread of interest is the purpose of the metadata schemes used, their rationale, and how much effort should be placed on finding related items, or finding snippets of interest within those items. Archivists and librarians have different professional perspectives on cataloguing and description, but the similarities may need to be examined as well, if new audiences are to be found for some of the digitisation initiatives. McNeil (2005) compares the concerns of authenticity expressed in the archival description with that of the textual critic. Despite different manifestations of their work, the concerns for establishing authenticity and relationships remain. Archivists and textual critics agree on the importance of relationships between items, and rare books librarians share some of these concerns. Librarians reared on very traditional AACR cataloguing may need to pay more attention to such relationships, as well as acknowledging that searching within items may be done in the future for reasons hard to predict at present. Perhaps this book might provide some food for reflection for those developing institutional repositories in universities. The effort at present is on encouraging input, but in future, there will be problems of finding and identifying related items, authenticating versions, format control, and dealing with related data sets.