David Starner wrote:
Karl Eichwalder 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.
Since scanning/OCR is now the dominant system to transcribe printed works, why not save the scans as part of the final product? With disk space dirt cheap, the availability of high-speed Internet, and willing archivers (e.g., IA), there's no longer a valid reason not to make the small effort to preserve the scans. The view that verification/integrity/authentication of digital texts is not important is, to be blunt, simply short-sighted, as I've explained in many prior messages. These are important factors. Why is there such a resistance by some here for preserving the scans along-side the structured digital text versions? It boggles my mind, frankly, especially, as I just noted, it is now *possible* to do relatively easy. If disk space is still an issue, IA will gladly take the scans and allow linking to them so the scans can be virtually "next to" the SDT versions. It's almost as if some here view scans as somehow "dirty" and not worthy of preserving -- or that they are even dangerous in some manner. That some say they are "unneeded" is equally illogical. How does one, for example, readily correct transcription errors in digital texts without the original scans to compare to? The argument that someone can go to the library to dig up a paper copy for error correction or verification of authenticity is ludicrous when you already *had* the paper copy in a convenient virtual form -- right in your hands so to say -- that the whole world can readily use without having to contribute to global warming by traveling to the library (assuming the local library even has a copy)! It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is illogical, as Spock would say. Any trained engineer will say (and I am a mechanical engineer in a prior life), that one never fully knows future needs and requirements of any product built today. This leads to the principle that it is better to include/save more information than one thinks they need at the time if the effort to preserve such information is minimal. The issue of "should we preserve and archive scans?" falls within the scope of this principle. Preserve the scans and make them available along-side the SDT versions. Jon