Digital Critical Editions

"Provocative yet sober, Digital Critical Editions examines how transitioning from print to a digital milieu deeply affects how scholars deal with the work of editing critical texts. On one hand, forces like changing technology and evolving reader expectations lead to the development of specific editorial products, while on the other hand, they threaten traditional forms of knowledge and methods of textual scholarship. Using the experiences of philologists, text critics, text encoders, scientific editors, and media analysts, Digital Critical Editions ranges from philology in ancient Alexandria to the vision of user-supported online critical editing, from peer-directed texts distributed to a few to community-edited products shaped by the many. The authors discuss the production and accessibility of documents, the emergence of tools used in scholarly work, new editing regimes, and how the readers' expectations evolve as they navigate digital texts. The goal: exploring questions such as, What kind of text is produced? Why is it produced in this particular way? Digital Critical Editions provides digital editors, researchers, readers, and technological actors with insights for addressing disruptions that arise from the clash of traditional and digital cultures, while also offering a practical roadmap for processing traditional texts and collections with today's state-of-the-art editing and research techniques thus addressing readers' new emerging reading habits"-- "Critical editions are going on-line, but not without intense controversy. Digital Critical Editions investigates how the transition from the print-based humanities to various forms of digital presentations affects not only the way scholarly editors deal with the practicalities of critical text editing, but also, in a deeper way, various conceptions about the nature of texts and their transmission. To explore the transition fully, it combines the experience of philologists, text critics, text encoders, scientific editors, and analysts of the digital turn, to set the searchlight on the future of philology's crown jewel - scholarly editing. It tackles a wide range of issues, offering the reader a deep view of editorial traditions and practices, from ancient Alexandrian philology to cutting-edge issues in text mark-up, from the Lachmannian revolution in textual criticism to visions about user-supported online critical editing, and from narrowly distributed peer-directed products to community-oriented broad products. The book bridges the expertise of philologists and new kinds of reading practices in cyberspace. It offers digital editors and prospective digital editors a sober description of state-of-the-art techniques and standards of text encoding grammars and transformation mechanisms. It does not dwell on arcane theoretical issues, nor on highly technical text mark-up considerations but instead attempts to extend the benefits already achieved to new kinds of texts and collections"--