Wittgenstein's Nachlass - Bergen Electronic Edition (WN-BEE)

Wittgenstein's Nachlass - Bergen Electronic Edition (WN-BEE)
Espen S. Ore
Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (NCCH), University of Bergen
Espen.Ore@hd.uib.no
Claus Huitfeldt
Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB)
Claus.Huitfeldt@hd.uib.no
Øystein Reigem
Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (NCCH), University of Bergen
Oystein.Reigem@hd.uib.no
Franz Hespe
Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB)
Franz.Hespe@hd.uib.no
Keywords: facsimile and transcription edition, text encoding, manuscript images

Wittgenstein's Nachlass - some 20,000 pages - has been transcribed and encoded at the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB) since 1990. In the summer of 1997 the first volume of an electronic edition will be published by Oxford University Press. This edition is produced at the University of Bergen in a collaboration between WAB and the Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (NCCH). The Nachlass will be published in 4 volumes with the last volume being published in 1999.

The production work needs to take into consideration:

Production of photos
Production of digitized images
Choice of presentation software
Preparation of the transcribed text
Links between text and images
The points listed above will build upon other considerations. The choice of presentation software has for instance dependeded upon a feature list for the finished product, availability and cost, compatibility with the existing transcriptions, etc. Similarly the choice of image formats and production techniques represents a compromise between the ideal and the feasible within the given deadlines and budgets.

In the poster presentation we will describe the choices that have been made and the reasons why. We will also describe the system architecture and the production methods. We will present the possibilities for the user which the architecture of the first volume gives, and finally we will describe the possibility for future architecure changes which are present in the system. This is important since we have no illusions that the technology easily available for making such a system today will be the best choice when the final volume is published in 1999.

In the software demonstration we will mainly show the product (or a final Beta, since the distribution package may not be available at the time of the conference), but we will also show some of the production tools and methods.