Let me note, I had no way of telling Greg's comments apart from yours except for context. Perhaps you relied on some HTML thing; please don't do so. I'm not going to argue the wisdom of HTML email, but HTML email that does not degrade nicely to plain text is going to look awful to many of the recievers. "Her Serene Highness" writes:
But a citation of an out of print book in anthropology, English literature, the hard scieces, et al, which might very well not be correct in its information- that will be problematic.
But this has nothing to do with etexts; this has to do with older books.
I would be very happy to see Boas online. Eventually I hope to track down an out of copywright version of his writings and scan it for PG.
It'll be a long time, unless you move to Canada. The last of his works are out of print for another 7 years in the EU and 33 years in the US. The Bureau of American Ethnology volumes are being worked on up to 1930 (since it's a US government publication) and I believe that includes some work by Boas.
In chapter 5 there might be a very quotable sentence- but what my student doesn't know is that this sentence was changed in later editions. And there's no page number- does he tell his teacher to read the entire chapter to find a sentence that won't be there in a later edition?
What is he supposed to do, give a page reference to one of a dozen editions that might be very hard for the teacher to find? With etexts, you know that your recipent has access to the same edition you have. And as someone else pointed out, if you quote the sentence, the context can be found in seconds.
After all, I have no idea who JM Rodwell was, or whether his translation of The Koran is the definitive English version, or why his translation was chosen- other than that his book was out of copyright. From my point of view, that's a red flag itself. If this translation is so superb, why isn't it still being used- or is it?
And how do I know that if I pull it off the library shelves? My college library has a half dozen different translations of the Koran; how am I to know which are in use? As for the reason it's not being used, I would suggest that the fact that academics like to retranslate everything every decade might be an explanation. My class used a modern translation of the Iliad, but that doesn't mean that in several hundred years of English translation of the work that's now public domain, there's not one competent, even superb translation.
Nietzsche's work for instance, was butchered by his sister. There are conflicting copies of his work floating around. When his works were copied for Project Gutenberg, did someone go for an out of copyright copy that is definitive, or one that his sister chopped up? Did that matter, or was it just more important to get a copy up?
I doubt that the people who scanned it were aware of the differences. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
-----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org]On Behalf Of D. Starner Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 6:45 PM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: RE: [gutvol-d] Perfection Let me note, I had no way of telling Greg's comments apart from yours except for context. Perhaps you relied on some HTML thing; please don't do so. I'm not going to argue the wisdom of HTML email, but HTML email that does not degrade nicely to plain text is going to look awful to many of the recievers. **Michele here. I'll clarify it for you. I didn't use HTML- I thought those arrow thingies would show up, and they didn't.** "Her Serene Highness" writes:
But a citation of an out of print book in anthropology, English literature, the hard scieces, et al, which might very well not be correct in its information- that will be problematic.
But this has nothing to do with etexts; this has to do with older books. ** In some cases it does have to do with older books. But we aren't dealing with new books. We're dealing with old ones. We're also dealing with the problem of not having the master texts.**
I would be very happy to see Boas online. Eventually I hope to track down an out of copywright version of his writings and scan it for PG.
It'll be a long time, unless you move to Canada. The last of his works are out of print for another 7 years in the EU and 33 years in the US. The Bureau of American Ethnology volumes are being worked on up to 1930 (since it's a US government publication) and I believe that includes some work by Boas. **I'm young enough that I'm willing to wait, and for all I know I may end up in Canada. But that's not the point. i would like to see Boas available to everyone. And to some extent he is- in paper. An ebook of his work isn't 'better' as someone said- it's different.**
In chapter 5 there might be a very quotable sentence- but what my student doesn't know is that this sentence was changed in later editions. And there's no page number- does he tell his teacher to read the entire chapter to find a sentence that won't be there in a later edition?
What is he supposed to do, give a page reference to one of a dozen editions that might be very hard for the teacher to find? With etexts, you know that your recipent has access to the same edition you have. And as someone else pointed out, if you quote the sentence, the context can be found in seconds. **Why not? It's done all the time. Students and scholars have cited rare books that are impossible to find before- I remember citing a rare book that contained the concordat between the Vatican and Germany for a grad class years ago, and information on the Black Star line of Marcus Garvey while still in high school. Why did my professors accept my citations? Because they could be tracked down. It wasn't impossible to find the originals- just difficult. The former one was located in Bobst Library at NYU and the latter was in the NY Public Library's Schomberg Collection. I can find both of them more easily now, because both libraries have their catalogues online. That menas I can find the cites and then go look at the actual books. Since there is no physical book with PG that an outsider can hold, it would be nice to have a master scan of the text. PG isn't meant to be a master text- it's a repository for copies. But copies come from somewhere. 'The context can be found in seconds'. Uh huh. The context of what? The context of a no longer accepted version of an original text? The context of a book that is out of date? I looked at the front end of the Koran. From the Translator's note, he (I assume it was a he) made the translation sometime in the 19th centruy- or the early 20th. I can tell, because he used the word 'Mohammedan', and because I know know PG uses books out of copyright, and because the language and other signs pointed to it being from the 19th century. But other than as a work of literature, i'd have problems using it- like if I were comparing 19th century versions of Arabic texts, because I'm not even sure it was written in the 19th century.**
After all, I have no idea who JM Rodwell was, or whether his translation of The Koran is the definitive English version, or why his translation was chosen- other than that his book was out of copyright. From my point of view, that's a red flag itself. If this translation is so superb, why isn't it still being used- or is it?
And how do I know that if I pull it off the library shelves? My college library has a half dozen different translations of the Koran; how am I to know which are in use? **How? Easy. You look at other books about Koranic translations and see if they refer to this one- and guess what? You can't do that online. Which means you have to go to a library anyway. Online isn't BETTER. It's different. By the way- in a library, I can tell if a book is a reprint. If it was reprinted, chances are someone thought it was good enough to put out for sale again. I can tell that without even picking up any other books on the shelf- it's called 'looking at the publishing date and the edition number'. It an old trick but you knew that already. Most school libraries don't keep first editions of definitive books on shelves- they're too valuable. A first edition with value- one that is considered important- would be kept in back. I can tell things like that from a card catalogue- PG is a library without one, in the snese of having the kinds of basic info that card catalogues (even electronic ones) have.** As for the reason it's not being used, I would suggest that the fact that academics like to retranslate everything every decade might be an explanation. My class used a modern translation of the Iliad, but that doesn't mean that in several hundred years of English translation of the work that's now public domain, there's not one competent, even superb translation.
Nietzsche's work for instance, was butchered by his sister. There are conflicting copies of his work floating around. When his works were copied for Project Gutenberg, did someone go for an out of copyright copy that is definitive, or one that his sister chopped up? Did that matter, or was it just more important to get a copy up?
I doubt that the people who scanned it were aware of the differences. **That's my point. Thjey did a great job copying it. People all around the world can read it and learn from it. That gives it worth. But i sit worth a whole lot to someone doing work on Nietzsche, and on how his ideas were changed by his editors? You hear that sound? It's the sound of someone starting their car to go to a physical library. anyone who is really interested in his philosophy- or even a college student trying to do a decent paper- has no way of knowing which edition this is or where it came from. A few added words on the front end (original publisher, original publishing date, number of pages edition number) and that problem would be gone. No academic worth his or her salt would be able to seriously dispute it. If the original index were included (if there was one- authors often do that themselves, too) and the bibliography too- well then you've got yourself a book. I could print it out and share it with my friends- after all, most people don't read whole books online. Control F is only useful if I'm in front of a machine. If I want to read a Tom Swift book to my kids at a chapter a night, I'm not going to do it from a laptop or park little Johnny's bed next to my desk. Maybe other people here take their T1 connections to the beach with them or on the subway, but I don't. When I want to cite something to my students, i print out something at home and take it with me, maybe with highlights all over the paper. That's funny thing about books- even casual readers like writing in the margins. I happen to love PG- but it will be in ideal form when it has hyperlinks to other books and to the notes I type up, when I can print it out and have it paginated, when I can tell if I'm reading a facsimile of a first edition. I know that's a lot, but a girl can dream. amd some sites are doing that kind of thing with individual books already- but their scope isn't as large as PG's. PG's scope is what makes it valuable, but I wouldn't use it foor scholarly work. One person made the comment that PG shouldn't try to anticipate what scholars want- it should let scholars discover it and let them say what they need. I just did, and most of what I'm hearing is that I have to learn to adapt to PG, when there are perfectly good college libraries out there. There is no reason for scholars to embrace a site that doesn't even meet up with basic MLA guidelines for books. After all, that's the business you are in- not original websites, but books. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
Michele "Her Serene Highness" wrote:
[snip of excellent comments]
**Why not? It's done all the time. Students and scholars have cited rare books that are impossible to find before- I remember citing a rare book that contained the concordat between the Vatican and Germany for a grad class years ago, and information on the Black Star line of Marcus Garvey while still in high school. Why did my professors accept my citations? Because they could be tracked down. It wasn't impossible to find the originals- just difficult. The former one was located in Bobst Library at NYU and the latter was in the NY Public Library's Schomberg Collection. I can find both of them more easily now, because both libraries have their catalogues online. That menas I can find the cites and then go look at the actual books. Since there is no physical book with PG that an outsider can hold, it would be nice to have a master scan of the text. PG isn't meant to be a master text- it's a repository for copies. But copies come from somewhere.
The above comment suggests two basic requirements PG should embrace for all texts: 1) The original source (or sources for composite works) is fully identified and described in the metadata using accepted library cataloging standards, and that these fields are searchable. 2) The original page scans also exist in the database, linked to and from the digital text version (easy to do in XML -- TEI has markup for this purpose.)
I happen to love PG- but it will be in ideal form when it has hyperlinks to other books and to the notes I type up, when I can print it out and have it paginated, when I can tell if I'm reading a facsimile of a first edition. I know that's a lot, but a girl can dream. amd some sites are doing that kind of thing with individual books already- but their scope isn't as large as PG's. PG's scope is what makes it valuable, but I wouldn't use it foor scholarly work.
The ability to annotate, reference and interlink texts within a digital text repository are very powerful features. The fundamental architecture of the "PG Library System" should include this as a future possibility. To me, this is even more exciting than some of the other things being considered, such as language translation. The requirements associated with these features strongly point to formatting all PG master texts in XML. W3C's XPointer can be used to address both spots and ranges within an XML document using several schemes (both W3C defined and custom schemes within the XPointer Framework.) The most common and most robust/persistent scheme is the well-known fragment identifier. But there's also a scheme to point to a particular element (tag) in a document which does not have an 'id', as well as to point to a spot within content (this scheme is still in Draft form -- it is not a W3C Recommend.) So long as the XML document remains unchanged (and for the fragment identifier scheme where the 'id's are kept unchanged even if changes are made to the document), the XPointer addresses will still work. (The term used here is "persistence".) One problem area, which gets into Identifiers, is how to address the XML document itself -- can it be addressed "standalone", or must it be addressed only when it resides within a repository (such as the PG Library)? If the XML document can be addressed standalone, apart from the repository, then obviously it must internally contain an identifier, the same one used to identify it within the repository and which forms part of the URI reference. It was an interesting exercise last year when the Open eBook Forum's Publication Structure Working Group spent three months studying how to reference and interlink OEBPS Publications, and how to address particular spots and ranges within particular XML documents within a Publication (OEBPS allows multiple documents to comprise one Publication.) Of course, complicating things, which may be less of an issue for PG, is that we wanted the linkability to persist even when the OEBPS Publication is converted to something else, provided the converted format can contain the relevant internal pointers. In this study, Identifiers became a Significant Issue (tm). PG will need to come up with a viable identifier system and specialized URI syntax for using XLink. For many of you, the above is probably all Greek. But if one wants to enable annotation, referencing, and text interlinking within the PG Library system, then this will put constraints and requirements that need to be considered. One workable solution is where all the texts are in XML, and one uses these cool technologies called XPointer and XLink to enable these features. Fortunately, it appears the "powers who are" have decided upon moving someday to XML for the PG Master Texts.
One person made the comment that PG shouldn't try to anticipate what scholars want- it should let scholars discover it and let them say what they need. I just did, and most of what I'm hearing is that I have to learn to adapt to PG, when there are perfectly good college libraries out there. There is no reason for scholars to embrace a site that doesn't even meet up with basic MLA guidelines for books. After all, that's the business you are in- not original websites, but books.
Michele's point is that before PG makes any substantive decisions, it needs to decide upon which user groups it would like its texts to target (the more the better in my opinion), and then ask the experts in those groups to submit requirements. This should be done *before*, not after, matters have been decided and the next-gen (or next-version) PG system is ready to be built. As I've said before, I believe it possible to come up with a set of basic requirements for all PG texts which will reasonably meet the needs for most, if not all, groups we identify (maybe by the "80-20" rule, at the minimum.) By designing the system to be extensible for particular special needs, then it will be able to fill in where the basic requirements don't. A summary rehash: If one considers that PG texts are not to be solely standalone (which is the traditional view), but rather are components of a dynamic and powerful repository (where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts), then this creates specific requirements which simultaneously impacts upon the areas of format, metadata/identifiers, database structure, user interface design, to name a few. A holistic approach is definitely necessary to assure that whatever is decided for one area will not cause problems in another area. Thinking holistically, factoring in the long-term vision of what we want the PG Library to do and to be fifty years from now (and I don't believe this is being discussed enough), is important. Jon Noring
Let me note, I had no way of telling Greg's comments apart from yours except for context. Perhaps you relied on some HTML thing; please don't do so. I'm not going to argue the wisdom of HTML email, but HTML email that does not degrade nicely to plain text is going to look awful to many of the recievers.
"Her Serene Highness" writes:
But a citation of an out of print book in anthropology, English literature,
hard scieces, et al, which might very well not be correct in its information- that will be problematic.
But this has nothing to do with etexts; this has to do with older books.
I would be very happy to see Boas online. Eventually I hope to track
down
an out of copywright version of his writings and scan it for PG.
It'll be a long time, unless you move to Canada. The last of his works are out of print for another 7 years in the EU and 33 years in the US. The Bureau of American Ethnology volumes are being worked on up to 1930 (since it's a US government publication) and I believe that includes some work by Boas.
In chapter 5 there might be a very quotable sentence- but what my student doesn't know is that this sentence was changed in later editions. And there's no page number- does he tell his teacher to read the entire chapter to find a sentence that won't be there in a later edition?
What is he supposed to do, give a page reference to one of a dozen editions that might be very hard for the teacher to find? With etexts, you know that your recipent has access to the same edition you have. And as someone else pointed out, if you quote the sentence, the context can be found in seconds.
After all, I have no idea who JM Rodwell was, or whether his translation of The Koran is the definitive English version, or why his translation was chosen- other than that his book was out of copyright. From my point of view, that's a red flag itself. If this translation is so superb, why isn't it still being used- or is it?
And how do I know that if I pull it off the library shelves? My college
has a half dozen different translations of the Koran; how am I to know which are in use?
As for the reason it's not being used, I would suggest that the fact that academics like to retranslate everything every decade might be an explanation. My class used a modern translation of the Iliad, but that doesn't mean
in several hundred years of English translation of the work that's now
I'm working on the 1616 translation of Suetonius by Philemon Holland, still regarded by some as the best translation. nwolcott2@post.harvard.edu Friar Wolcott, Gutenberg Abbey, Sherwood Forrest ----- Original Message ----- From: "D. Starner" <shalesller@writeme.com> To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 6:45 PM Subject: RE: [gutvol-d] Perfection the library that public
domain, there's not one competent, even superb translation.
Nietzsche's work for instance, was butchered by his sister. There are conflicting copies of his work floating around. When his works were copied for Project Gutenberg, did someone go for an out of copyright copy that is definitive, or one that his sister chopped up? Did that matter, or was it just more important to get a copy up?
I doubt that the people who scanned it were aware of the differences. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
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participants (4)
-
D. Starner -
Her Serene Highness -
Jon Noring -
Norm Wolcott