The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (demo/poster)

Introduction
The aim of The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen is to make the complete writings of the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, available in the form of electronic facsimile and transcriptions. Specialised software has been developed in order to facilitate the preparation, presentation and analysis of the texts. At the ALLC/ACH conference in Bergen in 1996 we would like to take the opportunity to present our project by means of a poster and software presentation.

In cooperation with Oxford University Press, the Wittgenstein Nachlass will be published in electronic form. The entire Nachlass will first be published as an electronic facsimile on CD-ROM. This facsimile may then be supplemented by transcriptions prepared at The Wittgenstein Archives in Bergen. By the end of 1995, approximately 9,000 pages had been transcribed, while transcription of the entire Nachlass is expected to be complete in 1999.

The Wittgenstein Archives was founded by the Senate of the University of Bergen in 1990 as a research project at the Department of Philosophy. The project is partly externally financed and has its own budget. The work at the Archives is made possible through an understanding with the Trustees of the copyright in the Wittgenstein Papers, Prof. G.E.M. Anscombe (Cambridge), Sir Anthony Kenny (Oxford), Prof. Peter Winch (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois) and Prof. Georg Henrik von Wright (Helsingfors).

Poster and software presentation
The Wittgenstein Archives' transcriptions are encoded in a primary format using a syntax called MECS (Multi-Element Code System). MECS defines the syntax for the registration standard of The Wittgenstein Archives, MECS-WIT, while MECS software enables the production of diplomatic and normalised printouts, word lists, numerical and statistical data.

In identifying a relationship between MECS and SGML, all SGML documents are formally MECS-conforming, but not vice versa. MECS contains some of the properties of SGML, but it also contains additional, simpler mechanisms for representing structures which can be cumbersome in SGML.

In a presentation of the work of The Wittgenstein Archives, we would like to demonstrate both MECS-WIT as a successfully applied registration standard and the software facilities provided by MECS. Sample images from the forthcoming CD-ROM will be made available, together with active links between the page images and the relevant transcriptions.