In thinking about issues related to reproduction of materials and seeing other people engaged in parallel activities, AM deemed it useful to convene a conference. Hence, the Workshop. FLEISCHHAUER thereupon surveyed the several groups represented: 1) the world of images (image users and image makers); 2) the world of text and scholarship and, within this group, those concerned with language—FLEISCHHAUER confessed to finding delightful irony in the fact that some of the most advanced thinkers on computerized texts are those dealing with ancient Greek and Roman materials; 3) the network world; and 4) the general world of library science, which includes people interested in preservation and cataloging.
FLEISCHHAUER concluded his remarks with special thanks to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for its support of the meeting, the American Memory group, the Office for Scholarly Programs, the National Demonstration Lab, and the Office of Special Events. He expressed the hope that David Woodley Packard might be able to attend, noting that Packard's work and the work of the foundation had sponsored a number of projects in the text area.
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SESSION I. CONTENT IN A NEW FORM: WHO WILL USE IT AND WHAT WILL THEY DO?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DALY * Acknowledgements * A new Latin authors disk * Effects of the new technology on previous methods of research * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Serving as moderator, James DALY acknowledged the generosity of all the presenters for giving of their time, counsel, and patience in planning the Workshop, as well as of members of the American Memory project and other Library of Congress staff, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and its executive director, Colburn S. Wilbur.
DALY then recounted his visit in March to the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (CETH) and the Department of Classics at Rutgers University, where an old friend, Lowell Edmunds, introduced him to the department's IBYCUS scholarly personal computer, and, in particular, the new Latin CD-ROM, containing, among other things, almost all classical Latin literary texts through A.D. 200. Packard Humanities Institute (PHI), Los Altos, California, released this disk late in 1991, with a nominal triennial licensing fee.
Playing with the disk for an hour or so at Rutgers brought home to DALY at once the revolutionizing impact of the new technology on his previous methods of research. Had this disk been available two or three years earlier, DALY contended, when he was engaged in preparing a commentary on Book 10 of Virgil's Aeneid for Cambridge University Press, he would not have required a forty-eight-square-foot table on which to spread the numerous, most frequently consulted items, including some ten or twelve concordances to key Latin authors, an almost equal number of lexica to authors who lacked concordances, and where either lexica or concordances were lacking, numerous editions of authors antedating and postdating Virgil.
Nor, when checking each of the average six to seven words contained in the Virgilian hexameter for its usage elsewhere in Virgil's works or other Latin authors, would DALY have had to maintain the laborious mechanical process of flipping through these concordances, lexica, and editions each time. Nor would he have had to frequent as often the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at the Johns Hopkins University to consult the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Instead of devoting countless hours, or the bulk of his research time, to gathering data concerning Virgil's use of words, DALY—now freed by PHI's Latin authors disk from the tyrannical, yet in some ways paradoxically happy scholarly drudgery— would have been able to devote that same bulk of time to analyzing and interpreting Virgilian verbal usage.
Citing Theodore Brunner, Gregory Crane, Elli MYLONAS, and Avra MICHELSON, DALY argued that this reversal in his style of work, made possible by the new technology, would perhaps have resulted in better, more productive research. Indeed, even in the course of his browsing the Latin authors disk at Rutgers, its powerful search, retrieval, and highlighting capabilities suggested to him several new avenues of research into Virgil's use of sound effects. This anecdotal account, DALY maintained, may serve to illustrate in part the sudden and radical transformation being wrought in the ways scholars work.