LOC Workshop on Etexts | Page 9

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.
******
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++ MICHELSON * Elements related to
scholarship and technology * Electronic texts within the context of
broader trends within information technology and scholarly
communication * Evaluation of the prospects for the use of electronic
texts * Relationship of electronic texts to processes of scholarly
communication in humanities research * New exchange formats
created by scholars * Projects initiated to increase scholarly access to
converted text * Trend toward making electronic resources available
through research and education networks * Changes taking place in
scholarly communication among humanities scholars *
Network-mediated scholarship transforming traditional scholarly
practices * Key information technology trends affecting the conduct of
scholarly communication over the next decade * The trend toward
end-user computing * The trend toward greater connectivity * Effects
of these trends * Key transformations taking place * Summary of
principal arguments *
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++
Avra MICHELSON, Archival Research and Evaluation Staff, National

Archives and Records Administration (NARA), argued that
establishing who will use electronic texts and what they will use them
for involves a consideration of both information technology and
scholarship trends. This consideration includes several elements related
to scholarship and technology: 1) the key trends in information
technology that are most relevant to scholarship; 2) the key trends in
the use of currently available technology by scholars in the
nonscientific community; and 3) the relationship between these two
very distinct but interrelated trends. The investment in understanding
this relationship being made by information providers, technologists,
and public policy developers, as well as by scholars themselves, seems
to be pervasive and growing, MICHELSON contended. She drew on
collaborative work with Jeff Rothenberg on the scholarly use of
technology.
MICHELSON sought to place the phenomenon of electronic texts
within the context of broader trends within information technology and
scholarly communication. She argued that electronic texts are of most
use to researchers to the extent that the researchers' working context
(i.e., their relevant bibliographic sources, collegial feedback, analytic
tools, notes, drafts, etc.), along with their field's primary and secondary
sources, also is accessible in electronic form and can be integrated in
ways that are unique to the on-line environment.
Evaluation of the prospects for the use of electronic texts includes two
elements: 1) an examination of the ways in which researchers currently
are using electronic texts along with other electronic resources, and 2)
an analysis of key information technology trends that are affecting the
long-term conduct of scholarly communication. MICHELSON limited
her discussion of the use of electronic texts to the practices of
humanists and noted that the