LOC Workshop on Etexts | Page 6

of the purposes and uses of electronic
versions of textual materials. As noted above, those interested in
imaging discussed the problematical matter of digital preservation,
while the TEI proponents described how machine-readable texts can be
used in research. This latter topic received thorough treatment in the
paper read by Avra MICHELSON. She placed the phenomenon of
electronic texts within the context of broader trends in information
technology and scholarly communication.
Among other things, MICHELSON described on-line conferences that
represent a vigorous and important intellectual forum for certain
disciplines. Internet now carries more than 700 conferences, with about
80 percent of these devoted to topics in the social sciences and the
humanities. Other scholars use on-line networks for "distance
learning." Meanwhile, there has been a tremendous growth in end-user
computing; professors today are less likely than their predecessors to
ask the campus computer center to process their data. Electronic texts

are one key to these sophisticated applications, MICHELSON reported,
and more and more scholars in the humanities now work in an on-line
environment. Toward the end of the Workshop, Michael LESK
presented a corollary to MICHELSON's talk, reporting the results of an
experiment that compared the work of one group of chemistry students
using traditional printed texts and two groups using electronic sources.
The experiment demonstrated that in the event one does not know what
to read, one needs the electronic systems; the electronic systems hold
no advantage at the moment if one knows what to read, but neither do
they impose a penalty.
DALY provided an anecdotal account of the revolutionizing impact of
the new technology on his previous methods of research in the field of
classics. His account, by extrapolation, served to illustrate in part the
arguments made by MICHELSON concerning the positive effects of
the sudden and radical transformation being wrought in the ways
scholars work.
Susan VECCIA and Joanne FREEMAN delineated the use of
electronic materials outside the university. The most interesting aspect
of their use, FREEMAN said, could be seen as a paradox: teachers in
elementary and secondary schools requested access to primary source
materials but, at the same time, found that "primariness" itself made
these materials difficult for their students to use.
OTHER TOPICS
Marybeth PETERS reviewed copyright law in the United States and
offered advice during a lively discussion of this subject. But
uncertainty remains concerning the price of copyright in a digital
medium, because a solution remains to be worked out concerning
management and synthesis of copyrighted and out-of-copyright pieces
of a database.
As moderator of the final session of the Workshop, Prosser GIFFORD
directed discussion to future courses of action and the potential role of
LC in advancing them. Among the recommendations that emerged
were the following:
* Workshop participants should 1) begin to think about working with
image material, but structure and digitize it in such a way that at a later
stage it can be interpreted into text, and 2) find a common way to build
text and images together so that they can be used jointly at some stage

in the future, with appropriate network support, because that is how
users will want to access these materials. The Library might encourage
attempts to bring together people who are working on texts and images.
* A network version of American Memory should be developed or
consideration should be given to making the data in it available to
people interested in doing network multimedia. Given the current
dearth of digital data that is appealing and unencumbered by extremely
complex rights problems, developing a network version of American
Memory could do much to help make network multimedia a reality.
* Concerning the thorny issue of electronic deposit, LC should initiate
a catalytic process in terms of distributed responsibility, that is, bring
together the distributed organizations and set up a study group to look
at all the issues related to electronic deposit and see where we as a
nation should move. For example, LC might attempt to persuade one
major library in each state to deal with its state equivalent publisher,
which might produce a cooperative project that would be equitably
distributed around the country, and one in which LC would be dealing
with a minimal number of publishers and minimal copyright problems.
LC must also deal with the concept of on-line publishing, determining,
among other things, how serials such as OJCCT might be deposited for
copyright.
* Since a number of projects are planning to carry out preservation by
creating digital images that will end up in on-line or near-line storage at
some institution, LC might play a helpful role, at least in the near term,
by accelerating how to catalog that information into the Research
Library Information Network (RLIN) and then into OCLC, so that it
would be accessible. This would reduce the