CULIS Conference on Scholarly Communication 2008

Department of History

The humanities: Text producers, text products and online text

Gunner Lind

Department of History, Saxo-Institute, University of Copenhagen

http://staff.hum.ku.dk/lindlind@hum.ku.dk

Slide 2

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Humanities communication as social structure

• Compared with other scientific fields, humanists are few.

• They are also very poor.• So the scholarly market has low commercial

interest.• Activities are often subsidized.• Some branches have a large non-scholarly

audience and commercial potential.• Here scholarly and non-scholarly

communication may be difficult to distinguish from each other.

• In-house information technology competence varies widely but is relatively low for the field as a whole.

Slide 3

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Varieties of communication

• Communication in preparation of research.• Communication during the research process.• Journals, of course.• Humanists are also concerned with a large field

of other activities.• These can be combined under one heading:

books.

Slide 4

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Before and during the research process

• Internet based communication has completely taken this field over, as everywhere else.

• Humanists will use new opportunities (Web 2.o). If they like them.

• But they are not likely to desire such tools much or adopt them eagerly. (Compared with other fields of scholarship.)

Slide 5

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Economies of communication: journals

• Some journals are financed by sales and managed in the conventional way by commercial publishers.

• They change media these years together with the rest of the portfolio of the publisher.

• Many journals are partly or heavily dependent on economic support.

• They are likely to move to electronic publication in the near future.

• Problems during the change highlight a need for innovation in ‘green’ journal publishing.

Slide 6

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

The book field

• Electronic technologies have been used in the ‘book field’ for a long time.

• Usage and range of solutions is expanding.• But the wish list in terms of social-technical

solutions is still long.

p$status=dm/firstname=Simon/surname=Harward/relation=son/burialdate=2 Apr 1620relp$status=m/title=Mr/surname=Harward/occupation=prebendaryp$status=fd/firstname=Sibill/surname=Cole/relation=wife/burialdate=18 May 1620relp$status=m/title=Mr/firstname=William/surname=Colep$status=fd/firstname=Anne/surname=Trussell/relation=daughter/burialdate=24 Sept 1620relp$status=m/title=Mr/firstname=William/surname=Trussell/occupation=clerkep$status=md/firstname=James/surname=Sutton/occupation=belringer/burialdate=16 Nov 1620

Kleio (1978)

Slide 7

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Aspects of humanist text products

1. Long half-life.2. Massive external hypertextuality.

Aspects of the book

3. Long!4. Massive internal hypertextuality.5. Internal navigation tools.6. There are many varieties of the book, many with

special technical needs.

Slide 8

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

The long life of humanist scholarship

• Scholarly texts are considered current for 10 to 20 years.

• Good work can be extensively used for more than a century.

• Only very well-known and widespread file formats are useful for humanists.

Slide 9

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

External hypertextuality

• Footnotes are the traditional tool of external hypertextuality.

• Web publishing extends and automates external hypertextuality.

• This will be a major tool for humanist scholarship.

MONARCHY, UNIFORM AND THE RISE OF THE FRAC 1760-1830*P Mansel - Past & Present, 1982 - Past Present Soc... 279. Page 3. MONARCHY, UNIFORM AND THE FRAC I760-1830 IO5 a bastion ... 41. Page5. MONARCHY, UNIFORM AND THE FRAC I760-1830 107 quis de ... Citeret af 3 - Relaterede artikler - Søgning på nettet - Alle 2 versioner

Slide 10

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Long text online

• Hardware limitations are gradually dissolving.

• Segmentation is a problem.• Long texts refer to themselves (‘internal

hypertextuality’).• Long texts need navigational aids.• Well establish file formats do not deliver.

• Too few and simple index tools.• Free text search does not work.

Slide 11

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Varieties of the book

• Text edition• Source edition• Monograph• Synthesis/survey• Textbook• Coffee table book• Documentary entertainment

The logo of Danske Magazin (1745 –

Slide 12

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Fragile solutions go beyond the book

Documentary entertainment:The Royal Danish Collections http://www.rosenborgslot.dk/

Text edition:Søren Kierkegaards Skrifterhttp://sks.dk/

Source edition:Mitteldeutsche Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Kriegeshttp://www.mdsz.thulb.uni-jena.de/sz/index.php

Tragic beauties.

Slide 13

Department of HistoryDepartment of History

Prognosis

Web 2.0 tools: humanists as followers.Most scholarly journals stop physical

publication at some point in the near future.Book matter will move more slowly to the net,

especially as republication.Continuing and hard to solve problems with

the technical format of book matter.Dependence on the non scholarly world for

many aspect of solutions.

There was no wind to blow him nearer to the tree, so there he stayed. He could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn't quite reach the honey.

A. A. Milne (1926)