On 7/14/05, Karl Eichwalder <ke@gnu.franken.de> wrote:
The "us" seems to be a very limited crowd ;) Scans are very important to all of "us" who rely on texts they can verify. Without scans the scientific world (universities and similar intitutes) will simply ignore the Gutenberg texts.
I'd say the universities and similar institutes are a very limited crowd, compared to the wide world. Most people don't find verification a hugely important thing. Honestly, I don't see that academics find it terribly important; the Oxford Text Archive doesn't have scans. Neither do all the print editions lining the shelves of the library; if I want to compare the EETS edition to the original, I've got to go to the one library in England that has a copy of the original manuscript. If you want to verify the Gutenberg texts, you can ask for ILL to get you a copy of the original. That'll let you get the edition you want and mean you don't have to trust our scans.