Abstract
Consciously or otherwise, readers have traditionally looked to editors as guarantors of the quality of literary and historical texts. With mass digitization, however, the editor’s role as trusted mediator is in doubt. On one hand, readers may accept uncritically the texts they encounter online, not questioning their provenance or reliability. On the other, they may actively reject the editor as an anachronistic gatekeeper whose presumed authority conflicts with assumptions of the democratic nature of information on the Web. Within the academic world, the increasing influence of “big data” in the humanities may likewise be overshadowing the value of individual editorial projects built around specific texts.
This presentation considers an electronic edition which attempts to vindicate the role of the editor by making online editorial work both transparent and explicit. Using functionality built into TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) XML, this edition allows the reader to navigate between the underlying, unedited text and an edited, modernized version. The interface additionally permits the reader to discover all editorial interventions made in the transformation from one version to another. In my presentation I will consider the advantages I believe such an approach to electronic editing presents for both readers and editors.
A Model for Self-Documenting Electronic Editions in TEI-XML
Consciously or otherwise, readers have traditionally looked to editors as guarantors of the quality of literary and historical texts. With mass digitization, however, the editor’s role as trusted mediator is in doubt. On one hand, readers may accept uncritically the texts they encounter online, not questioning their provenance or reliability. On the other, they may actively reject the editor as an anachronistic gatekeeper whose presumed authority conflicts with assumptions of the democratic nature of information on the Web. Within the academic world, the increasing influence of “big data” in the humanities may likewise be overshadowing the value of individual editorial projects built around specific texts.
This presentation considers an electronic edition which attempts to vindicate the role of the editor by making online editorial work both transparent and explicit. Using functionality built into TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) XML, this edition allows the reader to navigate between the underlying, unedited text and an edited, modernized version. The interface additionally permits the reader to discover all editorial interventions made in the transformation from one version to another. In my presentation I will consider the advantages I believe such an approach to electronic editing presents for both readers and editors.