Should an electronic edition walk, swim or shake its tail feathers?

The scholarly activity of creating a critical edition of a
literary work is an extremely complex process, composed
of many steps, each involving different features
and therefore requiring different skills. For instance
Wilhelm Ott described eight different steps, each one
corresponding to a particular software module in the Tu-
STEP system, starting with the collection of witnesses
and ending with the edition publication, passing through
intermediate phases such as collation, constitution of
copy-text, compilation of apparatuses and indexes creation
(Ott, 1992) .
But it would be very naïve to suppose that the current
paradigmatic and epistemological shift from print
to electronic medium in producing scholarly editions
would be without consequences for textual editing as recently
pointed out by Peter Shillingsburg (Shillingsburg,
2006). Whereas the printed publication is the last and final
step in Ott’s workflow, in the digital world this same
phase is no longer a dead end, allowing for further, and
potentially endless processing.
The actual crux is the analysis, definition and understanding
of these consequences, which, to be as possible
comprehensive and effective as possible should be carried
out both on an intellectual and a practical level. The
more tangible effects are focused at the two extremes of
the scholarly process, which from being the most mechanical
steps now acquire a new dimension and importance:
on the one hand the transcription of the textual
artefacts, which at present is a structural and semantic
encoding, and, on the other, the dissemination modalities,
which address how the edition is initially assembled
and subsequently published. While much theoretical
discussion has focused on text encoding, the same
is not true, with some notable exceptions, for the other
extreme: the actual creation of the edition.
An implicit complexity seems to be inseparable from
any thinking or talking about electronic scholarly editions.
It’s not by chance therefore that Susan Hockey
in Electronic Texts in the Humanities wrote that “Much
confusion seems to surround the topic of electronic editions” (Hockey, 2000). This is due to the fact that the
digital edition is a dynamic and mutable object in itself:
its nature as an electronic text which, like spoken language,
allows it to be processed in a reflexive way, and
therefore being augmented with new features and uses.
But there is more than this. The extreme complexity of
critical digital editions is generated by an aspect almost
always neglected but at the same time quite fundamental:
the multidimensionality of this strange animal, commonly
known as ‘electronic edition’. Both Jerome Mc-
Gann (McGann, 2004) and Claus Huitfeldt (Huitfeldt,
1994) underline how the object ‘text’ has more than one
dimension: why can the same principle not be applied to
the environment which contains, preserves and allows
the interactions with this object?
A first method of describing this complexity can be found
in ‘A framework for information system architecture’ by
J. A. Zachman (Zachman, 1987) where the author theorizes
a possible formal structure for investigating the architecture
of information systems. This structure is an
interpretational matrix where the different perspectives,
tied to the different user roles of the system, are joined
by the different descriptions of the information system,
each one referring to a particular model: functional, informational,
technological, etc. The primacy conclusion
is that an information system is represented by a whole
set of architectural representations, each one with a particular
nature, and communication between these different
levels is a key issue. Scholarly editions can be considered
as a specialized subset of information systems,
if not very refined ‘knowledge systems’ at all, the main
difference being that they respond to specific needs of
humanities research and not to generic business needs.
Therefore Zachman’s proposal can also be applied to
good effects in this particular field.
A further step in trying to formalize digital editions is
by means of specialized frameworks expressly created
for the digital library world. Even though electronic editions
and digital libraries are two different paradigms,
like men in Shakespeare’s Tempest they share the stuff
that ‘dreams are made on’. The two frameworks are the
5S (Gonçalves et al., 2004) and DELOS (Candela et al.,
2007). The 5S model is based on set theory and linear algebra,
and using five primitive concepts (Stream, Structures,
Scenarios, Spaces and Societies) it builds upon
these a series of definition, thus being able to define what
a digital library is without ambiguity. On the other hand
the DELOS approach shares many similarities with the
CIDOC-CRM ontology (Crofts et al., 2007), being based
on an object-relationship model. With the help of these
two models, I will analyze the differences between digital
libraries and electronic editions.
Starting from an empirical analysis of concrete cases,
some basic principles will be presented using a polarity
approach. An actual limitation in an edition will be
used as the starting point to develop an opposite principle
which will be used to overcome it. These principles
are the following: incompatibility vs. semantic umbrella/
glue; sonic screwdriver vs. lego-block; blob vs. crystal
snow; incompleteness vs. extensibility.
Finally the relationship between the latest innovations in
electronic (web) publishing and scholarly editions will
be examined. Using the “swimming” metaphor, Charles
Michael Sperberg-McQueen pointed out the main difference
between printed and electronic editions: while
the former are embedded with some kind of implicit
knowledge, the latter can contain the same knowledge
expressed in formal languages, being moreover endowed
with some active features (Sperberg-McQueen,
2002). This same difference between facts on one side
and features on the other can be mapped to the current
paradigms of Semantic Web and Web 2.0. An electronic
edition is therefore an ideal place of interaction between
these two different aspects of the WorldWideWeb, which
are usually considered in opposition to each other.
References
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