|
> 14. don't put pagenumbers inside the text/paragraphs.
For the casual reader, this may not be an important point, but for someone who publishes scholarly texts, which require documentation, it is. The page numbers of the original text do matter, as does the exact text that lies between them. I am the director of a library, and we had one of the first libraries in the country to install an automatic checkout system (in 1971 or so). When we tried to migrate from our IBM punchcards to a more up-to-date system fifteen years later, we discovered that the EBSDC coding could not be converted to ASCII (not enough computer power), and we had to re-enter every single record by hand. I can understand that no one wants to repeat this kind of conversion every time we move to new hardware and formats, hence the mild controversy over a new proposed encoding standard. But what really matters for scholars who have to show in their footnotes where to locate the authority for the text they cite, a lack of representation of the pagination of the original renders the e-text useless. Now PG has performed an outstanding service in making available many an obscure and difficult-to-find text, and the use of unadorned ASCII text, the only practical standard usable at the time it was begun, was obvious. One of the benefits of PG is its attempt to check the accuracy of the texts being transcribed. I haven't checked their efforts, but I respect the intention. The Google scanning project is a laudable one, but it is so imperfect (sloppily-executed scanning evident in far too many examples, obviously done hastily and unchecked) so that I'm afraid much will have to be redone. It's hard to get it right the first time, and even if one does, the evolution of format and hardware means that there has to be a thoughtful plan for future migration. At the same time, we who are scholars have to decide whether or not the original print text-source is what we're going to refer to or the e-text facsimile. If the latter, do we regard it as a new edition or as a faithful representation of the print copy? If we don't account for these needs in our re-encoding now, we'll simply have to redo the e-texts in the future if we expect electronic texts to gain much of a oothold in the world of scholarship and education.
|