Workshop on Electronic Texts: Proceedings, 9-10 June 1992

by Library of Congress

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GENERAL DISCUSSION * Two questions for discussion * Different emphases in the Workshop * Bringing the text and image partisans together * Desiderata in planning the long-term development of something * Questions surrounding the issue of electronic deposit * Discussion of electronic deposit as an allusion to the issue of standards * Need for a directory of preservation projects in digital form and for access to their digitized files * CETH's catalogue of machine-readable texts in the humanities * What constitutes a publication in the electronic world? * Need for LC to deal with the concept of on-line publishing * LC's Network Development Office exploring the limits of MARC as a standard in terms of handling electronic information * Magnitude of the problem and the need for distributed responsibility in order to maintain and store electronic information * Workshop participants to be viewed as a starting point * Development of a network version of AM urged * A step toward AM's construction of some sort of apparatus for network access * A delicate and agonizing policy question for LC * Re the issue of electronic deposit, LC urged to initiate a catalytic process in terms of distributed responsibility * Suggestions for cooperative ventures * Commercial publishers' fears * Strategic questions for getting the image and text people to think through long-term cooperation * Clarification of the driving force behind both the Perseus and the Cornell Xerox projects * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In his role as moderator of the concluding session, GIFFORD raised two questions he believed would benefit from discussion: 1) Are there enough commonalities among those of us that have been here for two days so that we can see courses of action that should be taken in the future? And, if so, what are they and who might take them? 2) Partly derivative from that, but obviously very dangerous to LC as host, do you see a role for the Library of Congress in all this? Of course, the Library of Congress holds a rather special status in a number of these matters, because it is not perceived as a player with an economic stake in them, but are there roles that LC can play that can help advance us toward where we are heading?

Describing himself as an uninformed observer of the technicalities of the last two days, GIFFORD detected three different emphases in the Workshop: 1) people who are very deeply committed to text; 2) people who are almost passionate about images; and 3) a few people who are very committed to what happens to the networks. In other words, the new networking dimension, the accessibility of the processability, the portability of all this across the networks. How do we pull those three together?

Adding a question that reflected HOCKEY's comment that this was the fourth workshop she had attended in the previous thirty days, FLEISCHHAUER wondered to what extent this meeting had reinvented the wheel, or if it had contributed anything in the way of bringing together a different group of people from those who normally appear on the workshop circuit.

HOCKEY confessed to being struck at this meeting and the one the Electronic Pierce Consortium organized the previous week that this was a coming together of people working on texts and not images. Attempting to bring the two together is something we ought to be thinking about for the future: How one can think about working with image material to begin with, but structuring it and digitizing it in such a way that at a later stage it can be interpreted into text, and find a common way of building text and images together so that they can be used jointly in the future, with the network support to begin there because that is how people will want to access it.

In planning the long-term development of something, which is what is being done in electronic text, HOCKEY stressed the importance not only of discussing the technical aspects of how one does it but particularly of thinking about what the people who use the stuff will want to do. But conversely, there are numerous things that people start to do with electronic text or material that nobody ever thought of in the beginning.

LESK, in response to the question concerning the role of the Library of Congress, remarked the often suggested desideratum of having electronic deposit: Since everything is now computer-typeset, an entire decade of material that was machine-readable exists, but the publishers frequently did not save it; has LC taken any action to have its copyright deposit operation start collecting these machine-readable versions? In the absence of PETERS, GIFFORD replied that the question was being actively considered but that that was only one dimension of the problem. Another dimension is the whole question of the integrity of the original electronic document. It becomes highly important in science to prove authorship. How will that be done?

ERWAY explained that, under the old policy, to make a claim for a copyright for works that were published in electronic form, including software, one had to submit a paper copy of the first and last twenty pages of code—something that represented the work but did not include the entire work itself and had little value to anyone. As a temporary measure, LC has claimed the right to demand electronic versions of electronic publications. This measure entails a proactive role for the Library to say that it wants a particular electronic version. Publishers then have perhaps a year to submit it. But the real problem for LC is what to do with all this material in all these different formats. Will the Library mount it? How will it give people access to it? How does LC keep track of the appropriate computers, software, and media? The situation is so hard to control, ERWAY said, that it makes sense for each publishing house to maintain its own archive. But LC cannot enforce that either.

GIFFORD acknowledged LESK's suggestion that establishing a priority offered the solution, albeit a fairly complicated one. But who maintains that register?, he asked. GRABER noted that LC does attempt to collect a Macintosh version and the IBM-compatible version of software. It does not collect other versions. But while true for software, BYRUM observed, this reply does not speak to materials, that is, all the materials that were published that were on somebody's microcomputer or driver tapes at a publishing office across the country. LC does well to acquire specific machine-readable products selectively that were intended to be machine-readable. Materials that were in machine-readable form at one time, BYRUM said, would be beyond LC's capability at the moment, insofar as attempting to acquire, organize, and preserve them are concerned—and preservation would be the most important consideration. In this connection, GIFFORD reiterated the need to work out some sense of distributive responsibility for a number of these issues, which inevitably will require significant cooperation and discussion. Nobody can do it all.

LESK suggested that some publishers may look with favor on LC beginning to serve as a depository of tapes in an electronic manuscript standard. Publishers may view this as a service that they did not have to perform and they might send in tapes. However, SPERBERG-McQUEEN countered, although publishers have had equivalent services available to them for a long time, the electronic text archive has never turned away or been flooded with tapes and is forever sending feedback to the depositor. Some publishers do send in tapes.