This document collects a number of postings to Etextctr-L and TEI-L in August-September, 1997, on the topic of electronic dissertations and theses. See the dedicated section on the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Project and related efforts, elsewhere in the SGML Web Page database. [Back to Main Page, Table of Contents]
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 23:38:48 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Re: Future of Etextctr-l
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19970801151428.00891200@postoffice3.mail.cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9708012326.C15692-0100000@tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by listproc.mail.cornell.edu id XAA22788
Thank you for waking us up a bit.
I am involved in e-journal publishing and most interested in what might
be termed the political economy of knowledge and the ways in which new
media such as Internet may affect it. For example, can we hope to see the
scholarly communities control anew their means of communication without
perturbing the sociology of knowledge production and so as to avoid the
doings of companies such as Elsevier that makes more than 30% return on
their investments (see Le Monde, July 20th, 1995 and Forbes, December
18th, 1995) and threaten the information lifeline of all but the richest
among us (institutionally speaking). And I am not speaking about
developing or emergent nations where the situation is unbearably void.
Does that interest anyone?
How about using the possibilities of XML to stabilize the publishing
platform over the Internet?
How about reconciling ISO 12083 with XML?
How about producing SGML conversion too;s and browsers that would be open
and free (à la Linux, for example)?
How about putting our university theses on-line for free and offering
them to the world instead of having UMI sell them to those who can afford
them. The money our universities pay to place the theses within Diss.
Abstracts would probably go a long way toward publishing these theses
electronically if some free, standardized tools and methods were agreed
upon (I am trying to do this with the French-speaking countries).
Incidentally, rumor has it that Elsevier is trying to buy UMI but that
they are quite a few million dollars short of what is asked for. Does
that ring any alarm bell in anybody's head?
How can we mobilize people to digitize the cultural heritage of every
human community. Let us remember that ANYTHING THAT WILL NOT BE DIGITIZED
WILL BE MARGINALIZED OR EVEN LOST.
Yes, I would like to see this list come to life again.
Best to all,
Jean-Claude Guédon
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean-Claude Guedon Tel. 514-343-6208
Professeur titulaire Fax: 514-343-2211
Departement de litterature comparee Surfaces
Universite de Montreal Tel. 514-343-5683
C.P. 6128, Succursale "A" Fax. 514-343-5684
Montreal, Qc H3C 3J7 ftp ftp.umontreal.ca
Canada guedon@ere.umontreal.ca
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From LOULEON@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU Mon Aug 4 08:38:04 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA05036
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:38:03 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA14253
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:38:02 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu (nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu [128.227.75.9])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA14244
for <ETEXTCTR-L@CORNELL.EDU>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:38:01 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199708041238.IAA14244@cornell.edu>
Received: from NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU by nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R3)
with BSMTP id 5787; Mon, 04 Aug 97 08:37:44 EDT
Received: from nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu (NJE origin LOULEON@NERVM) by NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU (LMail V1.2b/1.8b) with BSMTP id 9470; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:37:44 -0400
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 97 08:35:32 EDT
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: louise leonard <LOULEON@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU>
Subject: Re: Future of Etextctr-l
To: ETEXTCTR-L@CORNELL.EDU
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 1 Aug 1997 23:38:48 -0400 (EDT) from
<guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
It may interest you to know that the University of Florida has decided
to require its graduate students to put their theses on the internet.
This is one of the suggestions M. Guedon made.
Received: from roatan.ucs.indiana.edu (roatan.ucs.indiana.edu [129.79.10.65])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA03432
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 09:53:32 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu (ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu [129.79.5.204])
by roatan.ucs.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/1.13IUPO) with ESMTP id IAA31178
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:53:32 -0500 (EST)
Received: (from pwillett@localhost) by ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.7.3/1.8shakes) id IAA24937; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:53:31 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 08:53:31 -0500 (EST)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: "C. Perry Willett" <pwillett@indiana.edu>
X-Sender: pwillett@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
In-Reply-To: <199708041238.IAA14244@cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.HPP.3.91.970804083914.20096B-100000@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
This note woke my long-standing confusion about the issue of
e-dissertations. What does it mean to put a dissertation on the
Internet, or on the Web? Grad programs have developed a set of
guidelines for theses (1 inch margins, double spaced, bonded paper, etc),
and although everyone grumbles, it's meant to facilitate the long-term
archiving of the thesis. What kind of guidelines will grad students get
for e-dissertations? What format will they be in? Will we require all
students to learn SGML (the most sensible, but least likely solution),
HTML (at least it's an open standard), or will we be accepting theses in
whatever word processing format they choose? Do we let the students
decide which format is most appropriate? What about any non-textual,
graphical images? What formats and standards should we require for
these? What are the long-term implications for archival storage? I think
that DAI is digitizing all 1997- theses into PDF format--will this be a
viable format in 25 years? 50 years? Students and administrators
probably don't worry about this (or are even aware that it is an issue)
but librarians should be, and I don't think there is anything like
a consensus (or even a discussion) on this out there.
Perry Willett
Main Library
Indiana University
PWILLETT@indiana.edu
On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, louise leonard wrote:
> It may interest you to know that the University of Florida has decided
> to require its graduate students to put their theses on the internet.
> This is one of the suggestions M. Guedon made.
>From rba@bellcore.com Mon Aug 4 10:31:44 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA09712
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:31:43 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA03065
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:31:42 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from media.bellcore.com (media.bellcore.com [192.4.6.46])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA03048
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:31:41 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from rba@localhost) by media.bellcore.com (8.6.9/8.6.10) id KAA10797 for ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:31:36 -0400
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:31:36 -0400
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: rba@bellcore.com (Bob Allen)
Message-Id: <199708041431.KAA10797@media.bellcore.com>
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Standards for online theses can be found at the
Web site of the Network for a Digital Library
of Theses and Dissertation:
http://www.ndltd.org/
>From Julia_Flanders@brown.edu Mon Aug 4 11:25:28 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA12657
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:25:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA14993
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:25:26 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from brown.edu (brown.edu [128.148.128.9])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA14981
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:25:26 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
Received: from [128.148.157.102] (hathor.wwp.brown.edu [128.148.157.102])
by brown.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA07170
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:18:16 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: Julia_Flanders@postoffice.Brown.edu
Message-Id: <v02130504b00ba21f9910@[128.148.157.102]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:19:53 -0400
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Those interested in electronic dissertations and the issues accompanying
their production/dissemination might want to look at the web site on that
subject set up by Matthew Kirschenbaum at Virginia:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ETD/ETD.html
There's also a site at Virginia Tech:
http://etd.vt.edu/etd/
He gave a good paper on this subject at ACH/ALLC this spring and has put
together some resources which address (though probably don't solve
conclusively :-) issues of standard format and long-term archiving and
function.
Best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
>From m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu Mon Aug 4 11:34:23 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA12997
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:34:21 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA19809
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:33:59 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from smtp2.utexas.edu (smtp2.utexas.edu [128.83.126.10])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA19644
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:33:45 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (qmail 25150 invoked from network); 4 Aug 1997 15:26:32 -0000
Received: from mail.utexas.edu (128.83.126.1)
by smtp2.utexas.edu with SMTP; 4 Aug 1997 15:26:32 -0000
Received: from [128.83.205.238] (pcl-a118.lib.utexas.edu [128.83.205.238])
by mail.utexas.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA29829
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:26:31 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:26:31 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <v01540b0ab00b5d2b8a49@[128.83.205.238]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu (Mark McFarland)
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Bob Allen wrote:
>Standards for online theses can be found at the
>Web site of the Network for a Digital Library
>of Theses and Dissertation:
>
>http://www.ndltd.org/
Thanks for the URL Bob - this summer I have trying to identify what is
happening in the world of e-dissertations and theses (ETD) because I was
drafted onto a
campus committee charged with implementing an ETD solution. I have been
able to identify 2 organized efforts (so far) - the NDLTD and the UMI solution.
My question is (and I'm assuming you're involved in the NDLTD) - where
do the two initiatives intersect? (or do they). You all are developing
(if I understand this correctly from your website) a DTD for e-theses - but,
do you support or do business with UMI at all-specifically are records
for ETDs created by schools in the NDLTD program appearing in UMI's
Dissertations Abstracts product?
Also, does the author sign an agreement with the school regarding
rights and responsibilites (for protecting the intellectual property)?
Mark McFarland
University of Texas at Austin
General Libraries
>From rba@bellcore.com Mon Aug 4 12:37:07 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA16934
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:37:05 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA17600
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:37:05 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from media.bellcore.com (media.bellcore.com [192.4.6.46])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA17587
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:37:04 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from rba@localhost) by media.bellcore.com (8.6.9/8.6.10) id MAA10980; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:37:03 -0400
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:37:03 -0400
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: rba@bellcore.com (Bob Allen)
Message-Id: <199708041637.MAA10980@media.bellcore.com>
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Cc: etd@vt.edu, fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
I am not directly involved with NDLTD and should not speak for
its policies. However, I believe there has been friendly
discussions between UMI and NDLTD.
Ed Fox of Virginia Tech (which was mentioned in an earlier
message) is a good contact and I see the Web page refers
questions to etd@vt.edu
Bob Allen
--------------
> My question is (and I'm assuming you're involved in the NDLTD) - where
> do the two initiatives intersect? (or do they). You all are developing
> (if I understand this correctly from your website) a DTD for e-theses - but,
> do you support or do business with UMI at all-specifically are records
> for ETDs created by schools in the NDLTD program appearing in UMI's
> Dissertations Abstracts product?
>
> Also, does the author sign an agreement with the school regarding
> rights and responsibilites (for protecting the intellectual property)?
>
>From gailmac@vt.edu Mon Aug 4 13:22:38 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA19434
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:22:37 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA24765
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:22:36 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (quackerjack.cc.vt.edu [198.82.160.250])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA24744
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:22:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from sable.cc.vt.edu (sable.cc.vt.edu [128.173.16.30])
by quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA20339
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:22:34 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [128.173.124.135] (cat01.lib.vt.edu [128.173.124.135])
by sable.cc.vt.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id NAA25097
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:22:33 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:22:33 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: gailmac@mail.vt.edu
Message-Id: <l03102801b00b81718bad@[128.173.124.135]>
In-Reply-To: <v01540b0ab00b5d2b8a49@[128.83.205.238]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
UMI and the NDLTD are working together; discussion of ETDs began about ten
years ago between UMI, Virginia Tech, and several others. Since the
University Libraries at VT was brought into the discussion by the Graduate
School about four years ago, we have included the needs of UMI in all of
our procedures and programming as we developed archiving, accessing, and
processing for ETDs on our campus.
UM'Is roll has changed very little. Instead of sending a paper copy of each
dissertation to UMI, we automatically generate a note that is emailed to
UMI every time a new ETD becomes available. This note includes the author,
title, and the URL. It is my understanding that UMI then downloads the
ETD, makes a printout, and microfilms each ETD. This microfilm is added to
their vault along with its vast collection of microfilms of traditional
dissertations. The standard information is also added to Dissertation
Abstracts and recently UMI began incorporating the downloaded ETDs into
their online products.
The Scholarly Communications Project at Virginia Tech's University
Libraries provides information about ETDs at
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/
Re Mark McFarland's other questions:
DTD for ETDs: A Document Type Definition has also been under
development at Virginia Tech for at least a year because we have been
thinking that perhaps ETDs should actually be available in a variety of
formats to serve a variety of purposes. We dont' necessarily want students
to have to submit multiple formats, so we could possibly generate them from
one SGML format. This could result in: HTML for Web display (of some or
all information in the ETD), PDF for control of appearance and printing,
and the SGML for, among other things, generating the MARC (and other)
bibliographic records. More information is available at
http://etd.vt.edu/etd-ml/index.htm
Copyright: Our copyright policies are no different for ETDs than
they are for the traditional paper theses and dissertations, however, with
the ETDs we began to formally ask the students to agree to the following
statement:
"I hereby grant to Virginia Tech or its agents the right to archive and to
make
available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University
Libraries
in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all proprietary
rights,
such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as
articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation."
>Bob Allen wrote:
>>Standards for online theses can be found at the Web site of the Network
>>for a Digital Library of Theses and Dissertation: http://www.ndltd.org/
>
>Thanks for the URL Bob - this summer I have trying to identify what is
>happening in the world of e-dissertations and theses (ETD) because I was
>drafted onto a
>campus committee charged with implementing an ETD solution. I have been
>able to identify 2 organized efforts (so far) - the NDLTD and the UMI
>solution.
>
>My question is (and I'm assuming you're involved in the NDLTD) - where
>do the two initiatives intersect? (or do they). You all are developing
>(if I understand this correctly from your website) a DTD for e-theses - but,
>do you support or do business with UMI at all-specifically are records
>for ETDs created by schools in the NDLTD program appearing in UMI's
>Dissertations Abstracts product?
>
>Also, does the author sign an agreement with the school regarding
>rights and responsibilites (for protecting the intellectual property)?
>
>Mark McFarland
>University of Texas at Austin
>General Libraries
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Gail McMillan University Libraries, Virginia Tech
Director, Scholarly Communications Project
Head, Special Collections Department
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu (540) 231-9252
>From m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu Mon Aug 4 14:21:28 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA21379
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 14:21:27 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA13870
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 14:21:27 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from smtp2.utexas.edu (smtp2.utexas.edu [128.83.126.10])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA13839
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 14:21:25 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (qmail 12307 invoked from network); 4 Aug 1997 18:21:18 -0000
Received: from mail.utexas.edu (128.83.126.1)
by smtp2.utexas.edu with SMTP; 4 Aug 1997 18:21:18 -0000
Received: from [128.83.205.238] (pcl-a118.lib.utexas.edu [128.83.205.238])
by mail.utexas.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA10101
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:21:17 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:21:17 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <v01540b0eb00b837c8fe5@[128.83.205.238]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu (Mark McFarland)
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Gail McMillan wrote:
>UMI and the NDLTD are working together; discussion of ETDs began about ten
>years ago between UMI, Virginia Tech, and several others. Since the
>University Libraries at VT was brought into the discussion by the Graduate
>School about four years ago, we have included the needs of UMI in all of
>our procedures and programming as we developed archiving, accessing, and
>processing for ETDs on our campus.
Thanks Gail. Something I expected to find when I visited your site
was information that looked/sounded like the NCSTRL (networked computer
science tech reports library) software. I have followed the NCSTRL
project for some time now and have thought (I'm sure I'm not the only one)
that the software developed for tech reports could also be useful in
development
of other "collections" of digital files. Is there any use of (or plan
to use) NCSTRL code to manage any of the ETDs in the NDLTD?
Finally, It sounded as if you weren't shipping the PDF file of the e-thesis to
UMI for inclusion in the digital dissertations archive - correct?
Thanks for the information Gail.
As I said in a previous message...we here
at UT Austin have been trying to devise a plan for implementing ETDs
and do not wish to re-invent any wheels (or software or methods). But,
I am observing that providing an electronic copy of a simple all-ascii
document is quite simple. Complex ETDs and e-texts are difficult
for many reasons - not the least of which is the fact that the content itself
requires structures around it that are necessary in order for the end-user
to have access to the file. The "structures" I'm talking about are things
as simple as devising a method for acquiring a pdf viewer or multimedia
plugin, to such things as search engines (as part of the docuement) to
enable users
to get the most out of the document. Also, it seems to me that as authors
are in the position of having to address user interface issues as we continue
to invent new forms/packages for digital information.
Mark McFarland
UT Austin
Electronic Information Programs Office
>
>UM'Is roll has changed very little. Instead of sending a paper copy of each
>dissertation to UMI, we automatically generate a note that is emailed to
>UMI every time a new ETD becomes available. This note includes the author,
>title, and the URL. It is my understanding that UMI then downloads the
>ETD, makes a printout, and microfilms each ETD. This microfilm is added to
>their vault along with its vast collection of microfilms of traditional
>dissertations. The standard information is also added to Dissertation
>Abstracts and recently UMI began incorporating the downloaded ETDs into
>their online products.
>
>The Scholarly Communications Project at Virginia Tech's University
>Libraries provides information about ETDs at
>http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/
>
>Re Mark McFarland's other questions:
> DTD for ETDs: A Document Type Definition has also been under
>development at Virginia Tech for at least a year because we have been
>thinking that perhaps ETDs should actually be available in a variety of
>formats to serve a variety of purposes. We dont' necessarily want students
>to have to submit multiple formats, so we could possibly generate them from
>one SGML format. This could result in: HTML for Web display (of some or
>all information in the ETD), PDF for control of appearance and printing,
>and the SGML for, among other things, generating the MARC (and other)
>bibliographic records. More information is available at
>http://etd.vt.edu/etd-ml/index.htm
> Copyright: Our copyright policies are no different for ETDs than
>they are for the traditional paper theses and dissertations, however, with
>the ETDs we began to formally ask the students to agree to the following
>statement:
> "I hereby grant to Virginia Tech or its agents the right to archive and to
>make
> available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University
>Libraries
> in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all proprietary
>rights,
> such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as
> articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation."
>
>Gail McMillan University Libraries, Virginia Tech
> Director, Scholarly Communications Project
> Head, Special Collections Department
> http://scholar.lib.vt.edu (540) 231-9252
>From pwillett@indiana.edu Mon Aug 4 18:07:15 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA28641
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 18:07:13 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA05328
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 18:07:12 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from belize.ucs.indiana.edu (belize.ucs.indiana.edu [129.79.10.64])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA04608
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 18:06:06 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu (ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu [129.79.10.44])
by belize.ucs.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/1.13IUPO) with ESMTP id RAA24436
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 17:02:17 -0500 (EST)
Received: (from pwillett@localhost) by ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.7.3/1.8shakes) id RAA06420; Mon, 4 Aug 1997 17:02:17 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 17:02:16 -0500 (EST)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: "C. Perry Willett" <pwillett@indiana.edu>
X-Sender: pwillett@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
In-Reply-To: <l03102801b00b81718bad@[128.173.124.135]>
Message-ID: <Pine.HPP.3.91.970804165253.2602A-100000@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
I'm glad to hear that a DTD is being developed, because it seems
to me that until everyone is using the same DTD, it would be very
hard if not impossible to count on any particular dissertation to
be preserved and usable in the long term. Virginia Tech has gone
a long way in the right direction, but this last step is critical.
I'm reassured somewhat by looking at their web page--my initial alarm
was based upon Matt Kirshenbaum's page at UVa, where he lists a
number of e-theses underway, to be published on various media in
various formats, none of which sounded very permanent to me. But
with the development of a DTD, then everyone could format their
theses the same way, with uniform documentation. Good news.
Perry Willett
Main Library
Indiana University
PWILLETT@indiana.edu
On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, Gail McMillan wrote:
> Re Mark McFarland's other questions:
> DTD for ETDs: A Document Type Definition has also been under
> development at Virginia Tech for at least a year because we have been
> thinking that perhaps ETDs should actually be available in a variety of
> formats to serve a variety of purposes. We don't necessarily want
> students to have to submit multiple formats, so we could possibly
> generate them from one SGML format. This could result in: HTML for
> Web display (of some or all information in the ETD), PDF for control of
> appearance and printing, and the SGML for, among other things,
> generating the MARC (and other) bibliographic records. More
> information is available at
> http://etd.vt.edu/etd-ml/index.htm
>From Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu Tue Aug 5 10:29:15 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA13691
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 10:29:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA03361
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 10:29:13 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from brown.edu (brown.edu [128.148.128.9])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA03334
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 10:29:11 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
Received: from [128.148.157.102] (hathor.wwp.brown.edu [128.148.157.102])
by brown.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA14104
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 10:29:09 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: Julia_Flanders@postoffice.Brown.edu
Message-Id: <v02130501b00ce8a988ad@[128.148.157.102]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 10:30:47 -0400
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
This, somewhat predictably, from a TEI user: is the DTD development at
Virginia Tech starting from scratch? any thought of using TEI or TEI Lite?
or other existing DTDs?
Best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
>From gailmac@vt.edu Tue Aug 5 11:06:23 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA14974
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 11:06:22 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA05086
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 11:06:21 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (quackerjack.cc.vt.edu [198.82.160.250])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA05068
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 11:06:20 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from sable.cc.vt.edu (sable.cc.vt.edu [128.173.16.30])
by quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA16042
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 11:06:20 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [128.173.124.135] (cat01.lib.vt.edu [128.173.124.135])
by sable.cc.vt.edu (8.8.5/8.8.6) with ESMTP id LAA07930
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 11:06:19 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 11:06:19 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: gailmac@mail.vt.edu
Message-Id: <l03102801b00c90c56c8f@[128.173.124.135]>
In-Reply-To: <v01540b0eb00b837c8fe5@[128.83.205.238]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Searching and Finding ETDs:
Virginia Tech continues to be a partner in NCSTRL and so we are
using the Dienst software as one of our search engines. Currently Dienst
only searches the database of VT ETDs, but we plan to use this to search
for ETDs among the distributed systems of the NDLTD. There is a search
link from http://www.theses.org/ Now I will put a link on the library's
ETD page also! ( http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/ )
Re UMI: We no longer have to send UMI each dissertation because
they have access to them just like everyone else on the Internet/Web. The
purpose of the email message that is programmatically generated when a new
ETD is added, is to let UMI know that there is a new ETD available for them
to download so that the library no longer has to mail a copy to UMI. This
is one of the time and labor savings that libraries can realize from ETDs,
but UMI is still including them in Dissertation Abstracts (and their other
products).
>Gail McMillan wrote:
>>UMI and the NDLTD are working together; discussion of ETDs began about ten
>>years ago between UMI, Virginia Tech, and several others. Since the
>>University Libraries at VT was brought into the discussion by the Graduate
>>School about four years ago, we have included the needs of UMI in all of
>>our procedures and programming as we developed archiving, accessing, and
>>processing for ETDs on our campus.
>
>Thanks Gail. Something I expected to find when I visited your site
>was information that looked/sounded like the NCSTRL (networked computer
>science tech reports library) software. I have followed the NCSTRL
>project for some time now and have thought (I'm sure I'm not the only one)
>that the software developed for tech reports could also be useful in
>development of other "collections" of digital files. Is there any use of
>(or plan
>to use) NCSTRL code to manage any of the ETDs in the NDLTD?
>
>Finally, It sounded as if you weren't shipping the PDF file of the e-thesis to
>UMI for inclusion in the digital dissertations archive - correct?
>
>Thanks for the information Gail.
>
>As I said in a previous message...we here
>at UT Austin have been trying to devise a plan for implementing ETDs
>and do not wish to re-invent any wheels (or software or methods). But,
>I am observing that providing an electronic copy of a simple all-ascii
>document is quite simple. Complex ETDs and e-texts are difficult
>for many reasons - not the least of which is the fact that the content itself
>requires structures around it that are necessary in order for the end-user
>to have access to the file. The "structures" I'm talking about are things
>as simple as devising a method for acquiring a pdf viewer or multimedia
>plugin, to such things as search engines (as part of the docuement) to
>enable users
>to get the most out of the document. Also, it seems to me that as authors
>are in the position of having to address user interface issues as we continue
>to invent new forms/packages for digital information.
>
>Mark McFarland
>UT Austin
>Electronic Information Programs Office
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>UM'Is roll has changed very little. Instead of sending a paper copy of each
>>dissertation to UMI, we automatically generate a note that is emailed to
>>UMI every time a new ETD becomes available. This note includes the author,
>>title, and the URL. It is my understanding that UMI then downloads the
>>ETD, makes a printout, and microfilms each ETD. This microfilm is added to
>>their vault along with its vast collection of microfilms of traditional
>>dissertations. The standard information is also added to Dissertation
>>Abstracts and recently UMI began incorporating the downloaded ETDs into
>>their online products.
>>
>>The Scholarly Communications Project at Virginia Tech's University
>>Libraries provides information about ETDs at
>>http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/
>>
>>Re Mark McFarland's other questions:
>> DTD for ETDs: A Document Type Definition has also been under
>>development at Virginia Tech for at least a year because we have been
>>thinking that perhaps ETDs should actually be available in a variety of
>>formats to serve a variety of purposes. We dont' necessarily want students
>>to have to submit multiple formats, so we could possibly generate them from
>>one SGML format. This could result in: HTML for Web display (of some or
>>all information in the ETD), PDF for control of appearance and printing,
>>and the SGML for, among other things, generating the MARC (and other)
>>bibliographic records. More information is available at
>>http://etd.vt.edu/etd-ml/index.htm
>> Copyright: Our copyright policies are no different for ETDs than
>>they are for the traditional paper theses and dissertations, however, with
>>the ETDs we began to formally ask the students to agree to the following
>>statement:
>> "I hereby grant to Virginia Tech or its agents the right to archive and to
>>make
>> available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University
>>Libraries
>> in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all proprietary
>>rights,
>> such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works
>>(such as
>> articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation."
>>
>>Gail McMillan University Libraries, Virginia Tech
>> Director, Scholarly Communications Project
>> Head, Special Collections Department
>> http://scholar.lib.vt.edu (540) 231-9252
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Gail McMillan University Libraries, Virginia Tech
Director, Scholarly Communications Project
Head, Special Collections Department
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu (540) 231-9252
>From gailmac@vt.edu Tue Aug 5 14:02:43 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA20114
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 14:02:42 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA24990
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 14:02:41 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (quackerjack.cc.vt.edu [198.82.160.250])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA24969
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 14:02:40 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from sable.cc.vt.edu (sable.cc.vt.edu [128.173.16.30])
by quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA29276
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 14:02:39 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [128.173.124.135] (cat01.lib.vt.edu [128.173.124.135])
by sable.cc.vt.edu (8.8.5/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA09468;
Tue, 5 Aug 1997 14:02:39 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 14:02:39 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: gailmac@mail.vt.edu
Message-Id: <l0310280db00ce2439542@[128.173.124.135]>
In-Reply-To: <v02130501b00ce8a988ad@[128.148.157.102]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: Gail McMillan <gailmac@vt.edu>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
>This, somewhat predictably, from a TEI user: is the DTD development at
>Virginia Tech starting from scratch? any thought of using TEI or TEI Lite?
>or other existing DTDs?
I don't think we have not found a DTD that is a good match for the ETD, so
we are developing one. We are aware of the TEI and plan on the ETD DTD
being compatible. I hope that you will consult
http://etd.vt.edu/etd/etd-ml/index.htm and address any specific questions
to out DTD developer, Neill Kipp (nkipp@vt.edu).
>Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
>Brown University Women Writers Project
>Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
>(401) 863-3835
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Gail McMillan University Libraries, Virginia Tech
Director, Scholarly Communications Project
Head, Special Collections Department
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu (540) 231-9252
>From adam@apexinc.com Tue Aug 5 15:24:14 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA22103
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:24:13 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA27827
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:24:12 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from through.apexinc.com (through.apexinc.com [209.49.195.34])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA27817
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:24:11 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from mail@localhost) by through.apexinc.com (8.7.4/8.7.3.1) id PAA08741 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:41:21 -0400
Received: from apex.ads.apexinc.com(192.168.0.1) by through.apexinc.com via smap (V1.3)
id sma008734; Tue Aug 5 15:41:03 1997
Received: from dhcp-06.ads.apexinc.com (dhcp-06.ads.apexinc.com [192.168.0.145]) by apex.ADS.ApexInc.COM (8.8.5/APEXINC-SERVER-1.0-ADS-1.6) with SMTP id PAA13184 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:26:06 -0400
Received: by dhcp-06.ads.apexinc.com with Microsoft Mail
id <01BCA1B3.9A34C9E0@dhcp-06.ads.apexinc.com>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:24:01 -0400
Message-ID: <01BCA1B3.9A34C9E0@dhcp-06.ads.apexinc.com>
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: "Adam L. Beckerman" <adam@apexinc.com>
To: "'Etext'" <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>
Subject: Questions for discussion
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:24:00 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Hello fellow list members! I am writing from Apex Data Services,
Inc. We are a data conversion company that specializes in
converting information from a variety of different media into structured
electronic files such as SGML, HTML, and other formats. [This is not
a solicitation, so please withold any flame messages.] With all of the
discussion of SGML, DTDs, TEI, etc, I would be interested in hearing:
1. What are some of the problems electronic text centers [you] have
had in getting your information digitized?
2. How have you overcome some/all of these problems?
3. Why did you decide to use existing staff or hire staff to perform
the conversions rather than outsource?
4. Did you use in-house expertise for developing your DTD (in the
case of SGML), or did you hire a consultant?
5. What should/can a company such as mine do to help advance the
proliferation of E-text Centers?
I am looking forward to your feedback...
Regards,
Adam
--
Adam L. Beckerman
Business Development
APEX Data Services, Inc.
12355 Sunrise Valley Drive #680
Reston, VA 20191-3458
P-703-264-1300 x. 119
F-703-264-1330
adam@apexinc.com
http://www.apexinc.com
>From guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA Tue Aug 5 18:21:18 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA26779
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:21:11 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA06389
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:21:11 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from condor.CC.UMontreal.CA (condor.CC.UMontreal.CA [132.204.2.103])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA06378
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:21:09 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA (eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA [132.204.2.70]) by condor.CC.UMontreal.CA with ESMTP id SAA22425
(8.6.11/IDA-1.6 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>); Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:19:30 -0400
Received: from tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA by eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1042/5.17)
id SAA18481; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:19:29 -0400
Received: by tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1042/5.17)
id SAA04002; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:19:28 -0400
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 18:19:28 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
In-Reply-To: <v02130501b00ce8a988ad@[128.148.157.102]>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9708051835.A3844-0100000@tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by listproc.mail.cornell.edu id SAA26780
On Tue, 5 Aug 1997 Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu wrote:
> This, somewhat predictably, from a TEI user: is the DTD development at
> Virginia Tech starting from scratch? any thought of using TEI or TEI Lite?
> or other existing DTDs?
>
Indeed! I did suggest using ISO 12083...
Any thought on this?
Best,
Jean-Claude Guédon
>From John.Lamp@probitas.cs.utas.edu.au Tue Aug 5 19:27:07 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA27780
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 19:27:06 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA10470
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 19:27:05 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au (pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au [131.217.20.84])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA10422
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 19:27:02 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [131.217.20.23] (torch.infosys.utas.edu.au [131.217.20.23])
by pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP
id JAA09413 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:27:11 +1000 (EST)
X-Sender: jw_lamp@pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au
Message-Id: <l03102801b00d673b12a7@[131.217.20.23]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:27:01 +1000
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: John Lamp <John.Lamp@probitas.cs.utas.edu.au>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
>On Tue, 5 Aug 1997 Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu wrote:
>
>> This, somewhat predictably, from a TEI user: is the DTD development at
>> Virginia Tech starting from scratch? any thought of using TEI or TEI Lite?
>> or other existing DTDs?
>>
>Indeed! I did suggest using ISO 12083...
>Any thought on this?
Yes, sticking blindly to existing DTDs is a dead end.
TEI is a fantastic DTD for its intended purpose. It's massive overkill for
marking up a thesis for general research purposes.
The book DTD in ISO12083 is an example of an all encompassing DTD designed
by a committee for general purposes, but without encapsulating the essence
of thesis structure.
There's also the question of the XML DTD.
By all means have a look at compatibility issues, but I would also look at
compatibility with ICADD's DTD for visually impaired. Or a system for
generating ICADD compliant instances.
To me, the fundamental purpose of SGML is to capture the structure of a
document for whatever purpose is intended for the document. Markup is not
an end in itself, nor is there a "best" DTD in abstract terms.
The DTD is analogous to a data dictionary in a DBMS. No one in their right
mind (or left mind if feeling creative) would have the temerity to suggest
that there is a "best" data dictionary which is just as good for storing
general ledger information, as it would be for storing taxanomic details of
the sub-species of Anaspides (FWIW, a Tasmanian fresh water shrimp).
There has been a major project here which has developed a system for
preparing legislation for parliament, managing workflow, generating camera
ready copy, automatically generating amendment acts and dynamic
consolidation of legislation to a particular point in time. All of this is
based on SGML. None of the existing DTDs, even ones intended for
legislation, would come near this. The DTDs developed for the project were
certainly influenced by previous examples, but are essentially much more
developed than any previous DTDs.
I shan't even mention the HTML DTDs. HTML is not the little brother of
SGML, it's more the Forrest Gump cousin.
Cheers
John
--
_--_|\ John Lamp, originating in Hobart, Tasmania
/ \ Phone: 03 6226 2375 - Fax: 03 6226 2913
\_.--._/ email: John.Lamp@infosys.utas.edu.au
v <--<< http://www.infosys.utas.edu.au/cgi/people/staff/jw_lamp
Department of Information Systems, University of Tasmania
GPO Box 252-87, Hobart 7001, Australia
** NOTE change of address **
>From pwillett@indiana.edu Wed Aug 6 08:56:05 1997
Received: from ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu (ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu [129.79.5.204])
by belize.ucs.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/1.13IUPO) with ESMTP id HAA25436
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 07:55:59 -0500 (EST)
Received: (from pwillett@localhost) by ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu (8.8.5/8.7.3/1.8shakes) id HAA22482; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 07:55:58 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 07:55:58 -0500 (EST)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: "C. Perry Willett" <pwillett@indiana.edu>
X-Sender: pwillett@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
In-Reply-To: <l03102801b00d673b12a7@[131.217.20.23]>
Message-ID: <Pine.HPP.3.91.970806075040.20815A-100000@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Perhaps the TEI DTD is not appropriate for all fields and purposes. Of
course, there's nothing stopping anyone using it from just indicating
paragraph breaks--the level of encoding is up to the individual. But one
of the triumphs of the TEI DTD is its header, which allows for the
detailed recording of bibliographic information and metadata, crucial
for the longevity of any electronic file. There's no reason not to learn
from and build upon other's work in this area.
Perry Willett
Main Library
Indiana University
PWILLETT@indiana.edu
On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, John Lamp wrote:
> Yes, sticking blindly to existing DTDs is a dead end.
>
> TEI is a fantastic DTD for its intended purpose. It's massive overkill
> for marking up a thesis for general research purposes.
>From m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu Wed Aug 6 09:43:22 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA10191
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:43:20 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA11262
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:43:20 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from smtp2.utexas.edu (smtp2.utexas.edu [128.83.126.10])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA11251
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:43:18 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (qmail 3752 invoked from network); 6 Aug 1997 13:43:18 -0000
Received: from mail.utexas.edu (128.83.126.1)
by smtp2.utexas.edu with SMTP; 6 Aug 1997 13:43:18 -0000
Received: from [128.83.205.238] (pcl-a118.lib.utexas.edu [128.83.205.238])
by mail.utexas.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA02326
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 08:43:17 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 08:43:17 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <v01540b19b00de41ad566@[128.83.205.238]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu (Mark McFarland)
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
John Lamp wrote:
>To me, the fundamental purpose of SGML is to capture the structure of a
>document for whatever purpose is intended for the document. Markup is not
>an end in itself, nor is there a "best" DTD in abstract terms.
>
>The DTD is analogous to a data dictionary in a DBMS. No one in their right
>mind (or left mind if feeling creative) would have the temerity to suggest
>that there is a "best" data dictionary which is just as good for storing
>general ledger information, as it would be for storing taxanomic details of
>the sub-species of Anaspides (FWIW, a Tasmanian fresh water shrimp).
I agree on the purpose of SGML - and I think that trying to
develop a singel DTD for theses and dissertations is analogous to
trying to write a DTD for Government Information...to me the main common
attribute
of theses and diss have is that they are written (in non-fiction prose)
exclusively by grad students. So can a single DTD work for physics as works
for geography as works for chemistry etc...what I like about the TEI approach
is that it recognizes that there are inherent differences in document structure
based on discipline - If I correctly interpret the statement made in the
TEI guidelines
their purpose is to "provide a standard format for data interchange in
humanities research...".
Mark McFarland
UT Austin, Libraries
Electronic Information Programs Office
>From guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA Wed Aug 6 10:01:53 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA10638
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:01:50 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA25505
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:01:50 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from condor.CC.UMontreal.CA (condor.CC.UMontreal.CA [132.204.2.103])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA25127
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:01:26 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA (eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA [132.204.2.70]) by condor.CC.UMontreal.CA with ESMTP id JAA13160
(8.6.11/IDA-1.6 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>); Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:59:50 -0400
Received: from tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA by eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1042/5.17)
id JAA17222; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:59:50 -0400
Received: by tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1042/5.17)
id JAA27464; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:59:48 -0400
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:59:47 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
In-Reply-To: <v01540b19b00de41ad566@[128.83.205.238]>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9708060924.C22527-0100000@tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by listproc.mail.cornell.edu id KAA10644
On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Mark McFarland wrote:
> Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 08:43:17 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Mark McFarland <m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu>
> To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
> Subject: Re: E-dissertations
>
>
> I agree on the purpose of SGML - and I think that trying to
> develop a singel DTD for theses and dissertations is analogous to
> trying to write a DTD for Government Information...to me the main common
> attribute
> of theses and diss have is that they are written (in non-fiction prose)
> exclusively by grad students. So can a single DTD work for physics as works
> for geography as works for chemistry etc...what I like about the TEI approach
> is that it recognizes that there are inherent differences in document structure
> based on discipline - If I correctly interpret the statement made in the
> TEI guidelines
> their purpose is to "provide a standard format for data interchange in
> humanities research...".
Following up on this DTD problem, I personally favor two approaches:
1. No need to develop a particular DTD for theses because developing such
a DTD is a major undertaking and because there is nothing in theses that
makes them particularly singular as a class of documents. In other words,
theses are as varied as books. In fact theses are potential books (so
far. I am discounting the multi-media extensions that begin to appear now).
2. TEI is an excellent DTD but it is oriented toward the humanities and
it is based on a genre classification that does not help in the hard
sciences.
I suggested ISO 12083 because it is a DTD designed for books. We use it
for my journal Surfaces as well. It is being reconciled with XML and it
can easily be adapted to many situation by including some supplementary
statements tied to this or that sub-class of documents.
There may be better DTD's that ISO 12083 already lying there, but I
firmly believe that we should build on what already exists. And if
soemthing potentially better exists, please, let us know so as to help us
focus our discussion better.
Best to all,
Jean-Claude Guédon
>From Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu Wed Aug 6 10:12:44 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA11123
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:12:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA06821
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:12:40 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from brown.edu (brown.edu [128.148.128.9])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA06796
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:12:39 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
Received: from [128.148.157.102] (hathor.wwp.brown.edu [128.148.157.102])
by brown.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA21215
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:12:37 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: Julia_Flanders@postoffice.Brown.edu
Message-Id: <v02130500b00e29d726e2@[128.148.157.102]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:14:15 -0400
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
>Yes, sticking blindly to existing DTDs is a dead end.
>
>TEI is a fantastic DTD for its intended purpose. It's massive overkill for
>marking up a thesis for general research purposes.
Certainly sticking blindly to existing DTDs would be a dead end (or at
least silly). Using existing DTDs where they serve your needs instead of
reinventing the (large, complicated) wheel might be good policy. Although
installing and managing a large DTD like the TEI might seem like an
unnecessarily large task for an individual, it's the sort of thing an
e-text center might want to undertake on behalf of its clientele. And it's
important to remember that while one is under no obligation to use all of
the features provided by a large, inclusive DTD, using one that's used by
other people (even if you only use it in a limited way) provides
compatibility with other research.
Leaving aside the issue of compatibility, I don't say for sure that the TEI
DTD is the best tool for the job here. However, I looked at the ETD DTD and
my impression was that at its strongest it reproduced the features of the
TEI (basic structural elements, bibliographical information, some useful
phrase-level elements) but that in places it takes a presentational rather
than descriptive approach to text markup; for instance, in the definition
of the Q and BR elements:
>The element type inline quoted text (q) is a construct that denotes that
>the contained text should
>be flowed inline and be prefaced by a left-quote (66) and followed by a
>right-quote (99).
>The element type natural break (br) indicates that the text flow should
>break at this point, and
>begin flowing again after the break. Because the element is empty, the end
>tag (</br>) must be
>omitted. Breaking is most useful in long titles and for special emphasis
>within paragraphs.
This sort of definition (and the emphasis throughout the documentation on
the phrase "will be formatted as") really compromises the usefulness of the
DTD, and while it may be well-intended to help the thesis writer avoid
dealing with complicated element definitions (what *is* a quotation?) and
presentational uncertainty (how can I guarantee that my quotations will
look the way I want?), I think it encourages the thesis writer to think of
markup as merely a way to get a presentational effect, rather than as an
analytical tool. In the short term, encoding one's thesis *somehow*
probably seems like the important goal. However, if we have any real
interest in using text markup as a constitutive part of our research
(rather than an unfortunately cumbersome way of preserving it in lucite),
we should start thinking of how to encourage young researchers to engage
early with the real analytical issues that text markup raises. How will
their research be used by other people? How can the encoding they use make
this easier? How can text encoding help people share research in the
future? If we think SGML is a good idea for dissertations, why not
subsequent research as well? and why not learn a DTD that is, as John Lamp
points out, "a fantastic DTD for its intended purpose" (or one that's as
good)? If dissertations are regarded as research that no one will want to
use, it's no wonder that it's so hard to make oneself write them :-)
I've become more fervent than I intended, but I do think that if SGML has a
future in humanities research it is as an analytical tool, not as an
archival format. After the initial plug I am trying to downplay my interest
in the TEI qua TEI, because I think the really important thing is to use a
DTD which lets you say important things about your data, whatever that DTD
may be. (A discussion of standards and their value is really a separate
topic.) To the extent that the ETD DTD does this, I applaud it, but it
looks to me as if it could take a more thoroughgoing approach.
best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
>From Nick.Finke@Law.UC.Edu Wed Aug 6 10:25:04 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA11664
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:25:03 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA19736
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:25:02 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from taft.law.uc.edu (taft.law.uc.edu [129.137.84.101])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA19720
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:25:01 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [129.137.87.149] (gandalf.law.uc.edu [129.137.87.149])
by taft.law.uc.edu (8.8.5/taft-8.8.5.0) with ESMTP id KAA16625
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:24:09 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: finkend@taft.law.uc.edu
Message-Id: <v03007800b00e340468cb@[129.137.87.149]>
In-Reply-To: <l03102801b00d673b12a7@[131.217.20.23]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:24:06 -0400
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: Nick Finke <Nick.Finke@Law.UC.Edu>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
[For my own purposes this note selects only parts of John Lamp's message
and not necessarily in the original order]
At 7:27 PM -0400 8/5/97, John Lamp wrote:
>>On Tue, 5 Aug 1997 Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu wrote:
>>
>>> This, somewhat predictably, from a TEI user: is the DTD development at
>>> Virginia Tech starting from scratch? any thought of using TEI or TEI Lite?
>>> or other existing DTDs?
>>>
>>Indeed! I did suggest using ISO 12083...
>>Any thought on this?
>
>Yes, sticking blindly to existing DTDs is a dead end.
I could not agree more with this, but the operative word is "blindly".
>To me, the fundamental purpose of SGML is to capture the structure of a
>document for whatever purpose is intended for the document. Markup is not
>an end in itself, nor is there a "best" DTD in abstract terms.
I think this is very true, and I agree with John's characterization of ISO
12083 as not "encapsulating the essence of thesis structure". In my
opinion, the reason for this is that ISO 12083 is a DTD that aims to
facilitate the publication of the data it contains in hardcopy codex form.
That is its primary goal. It is not well set up to allow the data it
contains to be used for academic research.
>
>TEI is a fantastic DTD for its intended purpose. It's massive overkill for
>marking up a thesis for general research purposes.
I strongly disagree. One of the primary purposes of TEI is to encode text
for study. It was primarily designed by academics for their own use. To
accomplish its intended purposes, the TEI scheme allows inclusion of
elements and attributes for metadata of the sort that academics need. For
academic documents that work with text, E-dissertations can fit nicely into
the TEI scheme.
One key to understanding the TEI scheme is to realize that it gives the
user a wide selection of tools but that the user will only actually use the
ones needed. The TEI DTD is "massive" only in the resources it offers.
The actual DTD used usually includes only a fraction of what is available.
Nick Finke
**********************************************
Nicholas D. Finke Phone: (513) 556-0103
Center for Electronic Text in the Law Fax: (513) 556-6265
University of Cincinnati College of Law
P.O. Box 210142 Email:
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0142 nick.finke@law.uc.edu
**********************************************
>From sre@psulias.psu.edu Wed Aug 6 10:43:11 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA12608
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:43:10 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA08628
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:43:09 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from psulias.psu.edu (PSULIAS.lcs.psu.edu [128.118.88.200])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA08607
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:43:08 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from Spenser.libraries.psu.edu
("port 1047"@Spenser.libraries.psu.edu) by psulias.psu.edu
(PMDF V5.1-8 #16252) with SMTP id <01IM47H3LGPC8ZFC8N@psulias.psu.edu> for
ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 10:43:03 EDT
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 10:43:06 +0000
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: Steven Ellis <sre@psulias.psu.edu>
Subject: Etext Centers DG - Minutes
X-Sender: sre@psulias.psu.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Message-id: <3.0.1.16.19970806104306.425f42fe@psulias.psu.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (16)
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Thanks to Paul for kickstarting a little talk. It`s worth noting that this
list has also traditionally functioned as the electronic outlet of the
electronic text centers discussion group of the American Library
Association which meets twice a year at ALA. This means that things like
the meeting announcements and minutes get posted here and nowhere else.
You'll find that many of the issues raised in the ftf discussion group (see
below) are pertinent to ETEXTCTR-L, and I'm sure we would all benefit from
their further discussion here.
Steven Ellis
Chair, Electronic Text Centers In Libraries Discussion Group
ACRL, ALA
Electronic Text Librarian
PSU Libraries
MINUTES - ELECTRONIC TEXT CENTERS DISCUSSION GROUP, ALA ANNUAL, 6/28/97
Previously at ALA Midwinter in Washington DC our interest was directed
toward the purpose of electronic text centers, and, in particular,
promotion of new services and patron outreach. In this spirit, discussion
opened with the following question: how do we explain the purpose of
electronic text to our patrons, to our administrators, much less to our
ourselves?
There were 15 representatives on hand from institutions with an interest in
electronic text. Of these, some offer extensive programs, while others are
just beginning or looking for ways to begin new services.
Initially the following suggestions were made with regard to introducing
and integrating electronic text technology into local research and teaching
communities.
- Subject specialists can be encouraged integrate electronic text
resources into existing instruction.
- Teaching faculty who have used electronic text successfully in their own
research may be invited to do instructional sessions for their colleagues.
- Electronic text may be treated as a subject itself, with ties to the
history of the book, cyberculture, and the history of technology.
- Becoming involved with or initiating local electronic publishing
projects such as electronic journals may help to secure staff and lend
legitimacy to library centers.
- The employment of graduate students often leads to strong bonds with
their departments.
Two questions were raised: 1) who begins the process of establishing an
electronic text center? and 2) what is the connection between technical
services in libraries and electronic text centers?
It was remarked that the process of establishing electronic text centers
has varied from institution to institution due to local institutional
dynamics. Some have hired new personnel to coordinate electronic text
activities, while others have added new responsibilities to existing
positions. The possibility of joint funding between academic departments
and libraries was raised.
Disciplinary crossovers may also be exploited in establishing an electronic
text center. Some centers have integrated social science data sets into
their collections, for example. This expands the definition of "text." The
inclusion of geographic information systems (GIS) was also suggested. It
was remarked that the inclusion of social science data sets would both
require diverse skill sets from staff, and may also diminish the more
traditional 'humanities' component of the center.
While most electronic text centers begin with public service in mind, it
was agreed that technical services personnel have an important role to
play. Technical services personnel are uniquely qualified to address the
issues of electronic text standards, and redirecting these skills to
electronic text initiatives may be opportune in light of current trends in
downsizing and outsourcing.
The remainder of the discussion focused on the issues of access, ownership
and libraries as publishers.
In many cases electronic text centers in libraries produce texts. The
extent to which libraries may and should become involved in electronic
publishing efforts remains unclear, however. On the one hand libraries have
in many cases led the way in providing texts on-line, yet libraries often
lack the resources necessary to make large collections available. It was
suggested that there is currently nothing like a "critical mass" or a true
electronic humanities research collection. On the other hand more than a
few publishers are beginning to become engaged in electronic projects.
Unfortunately, many publishers proceed without a knowledge of best
practices and often unwittingly produce substandard products.
Issues of ownership also may complicate publishers' efforts. Currently when
a publisher produces an electronic product there is often an incentive to
provide only a networked "access" by subscription to that product and not
give libraries the option to purchase a license or a degree of
"ownership." Concern was expressed that the "core of the humanities
library" may be eroded if libraries are not able to maintain local
ownership of collections. When publishers only allow subscription, problems
with long term preservation may also arise.
As we began to wrap up it became clear that those involved with electronic
text initiatives in libraries may have a lot to communicate to publishers
as well as perhaps something to learn about publishers needs and goals. It
was suggested that representatives from electronic text publishers be
invited to our next meeting in order to further dialog.
Finally, during the course of discussion concern was expressed that
information about the major electronic text educational initiatives is not
readily available. These initiatives are:
The SGML Server Program at the University of Michigan Humanities Text
Initiative (http://www.hti.umich.edu/misc/ssp/workshop-9705.html)
The Rare Books School at the University of Virginia
(http://poe.acc.virginia.edu/~oldbooks/rbs96/rbs96.html)
The Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities Summer Seminar
(http://www.ceth.rutgers.edu/programs/TEI97/Tei97.htm)
The Introduction to Electronic Texts and Images at the University of New
Brunswick (http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/SGML_course/index.html)
>From Greg.MacGowan@Law.UC.Edu Wed Aug 6 13:32:10 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA18734
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 13:32:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: Greg.MacGowan@Law.UC.Edu
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA27504
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 13:32:08 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from taft.law.uc.edu (taft.law.uc.edu [129.137.84.101])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA27449
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 13:32:05 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
Received: from [129.137.84.93] (etext7.law.uc.edu [129.137.84.93])
by taft.law.uc.edu (8.8.5/taft-8.8.5.0) with ESMTP id NAA20553
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 13:31:07 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: macgowgs@taft.law.uc.edu
Message-Id: <l03010d02b00e4bc9a234@[129.137.84.93]>
In-Reply-To: <v02130500b00e29d726e2@[128.148.157.102]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 13:30:49 -0400
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Although Julia makes many strong comments about the advantages and
disadvantages
of the ETD DTD, I would like to focus on one comment in particular:
>In the short term, encoding one's thesis *somehow*
>probably seems like the important goal.
If we are to expect the students themselves to tag their dissertations, how
can we make the process as simple and clear as possible, first to avoid bad
tagging, and second to ensure consistent tagging (both within and between
documents)? Not all Ph.D. candidates will have the same level of desire for
wrestling with the tagging conundrums that so many of us take such great
pleasure in. (-;
It is also important to note, as someone did a few days ago, that
dissertation writers will already be wrestling with the confinements of a
stylesheet which specifies margins, spacing, etc. If e-dissertations were
to completely replace hardcopy dissertations, these confinements would
disappear and the DTD could completely ignore presentational factors.
However, since the 2 formats are sure to overlap for some time, I would
suggest that the stylesheet play a significant role in informing the DTD.
This may well result in a DTD that is, to some extent,
"presentation-oriented." This would make the DTD much easier to work with
from the user's point-of-view.
Greg MacGowan
>From hope.greenberg@uvm.edu Wed Aug 6 16:20:37 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA27229
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:20:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA06078
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:20:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from smtpgate.uvm.edu (smtpgate.uvm.edu [132.198.101.121])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA06054
for <etextctr-l@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:20:32 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from 132.198.103.40 (132.198.103.40) by smtpgate.uvm.edu (LSMTP for Windows NT v1.1a) with SMTP id <0.A8A66070@smtpgate.uvm.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:20:30 -0400
Message-ID: <33E8DC8D.7786@uvm.edu>
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 16:20:48 -0400
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@uvm.edu>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: etextctr-l@cornell.edu
Subject: e-dissertations
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Given that (from recent posts):
- "sticking blindly to existing DTDs is a dead end."
- The TEI is . . ."massive overkill for marking up a thesis for general
research purposes."
- "think [the ead dtd] encourages the thesis writer to think of markup
as merely a way to get a presentational effect, rather than as an
analytical tool.
and seeing that:
- the ETD DTD appears to be a fairly comprehensive list of tags that
describe the thesis as it appears today
I wonder if we could frame the questions about e-dissertations a
slightly different way by stepping back a bit more. Yes, the meta data
that the TEI strives to contain is important and it, or something very
like it, should be a part of every etd. But what ther assumptions
should we make about the mark-up of an etd? The reasons for the
particular format of print theses and dissertations may be lost in
antiquity but we can take a few guesses. There's a larger margin on the
left side of a page than on the right to account for a binding. Lines
are double spaced to allow insertion of comments. Other features are set
certain ways for consistency, and I would guess that certain features
play a role in making the processing and cataloguing of thousands of
these things more efficient.
In other words, the work is designed to be printed on paper, bound,
catalogued, read by a committee, and eventually by other interested
scholars. To accommodate these readers and cataloguers the document has
taken a particular form. But creating an etd adds another player: making
a machine readable text means making a text readable by a machine.
(duh!) How does that change what a thesis/dissertation is? what it
does? how it functions?
If a thesis/dissertation is a written narrative of a given length that
describes, explores, and draws conclusions about a particular topic or
idea, and does so in a formally proscribed way, then a DTD that reflects
the current form of a t/d seems appropriate. If, however, the t/d is a
document that encapsulates a person's research on a topic and their
conclusions about that topic in whatever way is best suited to that
research and topic, then we have something quite different. And if that
document is never meant to be printed as a linear
intro/explication/conclusion narrative, then we have something more
complex yet.
Like the "baking ham" story* don't we know enough about electronic texts
at this point to leapfrog over the "first content of the new media is
the old media" phase and go right on to something better? Wouldn't this
be a wonderful time to examine the function and practice of the
thesis/dissertation before cramming it into a limiting model?
- Hope
---------------
Hope Greenberg
University of Vermont
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag
*The baking ham story: a friend watched with interest as the cook cut
the ends off a canned ham before baking it. When asked why the ham was
prepared this way, the cook replied that it was "the way Mom always did
it." Mom in turn answered that her mother had prepared the ham the same
way. Grandma, when asked, laughed and replied: "Yes, our only baking pan
was slightly shorter than the standard ham so we always had to cut the
ends off." The moral usually drawn from the story being, of course, that
tradition, while often grounded in practicality, usually takes on a life
of its own.
>From John.Lamp@infosys.utas.edu.au Wed Aug 6 18:22:39 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA00373
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 18:22:38 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA25491
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 18:22:37 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au (pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au [131.217.20.84])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA25469
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 18:22:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [131.217.20.23] (torch.infosys.utas.edu.au [131.217.20.23])
by pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP
id IAA01303 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 08:22:36 +1000 (EST)
X-Sender: jw_lamp@pietas.infosys.utas.edu.au
Message-Id: <l03102801b00ea86586c7@[131.217.20.23]>
In-Reply-To:
<Pine.HPP.3.91.970806075040.20815A-100000@ophelia.ucs.indiana.edu>
References: <l03102801b00d673b12a7@[131.217.20.23]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 08:18:21 +1000
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: John Lamp <John.Lamp@infosys.utas.edu.au>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
>Perhaps the TEI DTD is not appropriate for all fields and purposes. Of
>course, there's nothing stopping anyone using it from just indicating
>paragraph breaks--the level of encoding is up to the individual. But one
>of the triumphs of the TEI DTD is its header, which allows for the
>detailed recording of bibliographic information and metadata, crucial
>for the longevity of any electronic file. There's no reason not to learn
>from and build upon other's work in this area.
And there's always the Dublin Core DTD for metadata. I've links to lots of
DTDs (but not the ETD as yet, sorry) at
http://lamp.infosys.utas.edu.au/net.html
Cheers
John
--
_--_|\ John Lamp, originating in Hobart, Tasmania
/ \ Phone: 03 6226 2375 - Fax: 03 6226 2913
\_.--._/ email: John.Lamp@infosys.utas.edu.au
v <--<< http://www.infosys.utas.edu.au/cgi/people/staff/jw_lamp
Department of Information Systems, University of Tasmania
GPO Box 252-87, Hobart 7001, Australia
** NOTE change of address **
>From guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA Wed Aug 6 20:20:10 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA02923
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:20:08 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA18199
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:20:08 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from condor.CC.UMontreal.CA ([132.204.2.103])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA18178
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:20:06 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA (eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA [132.204.2.70]) by condor.CC.UMontreal.CA with ESMTP id UAA08072
(8.6.11/IDA-1.6 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>); Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:18:38 -0400
Received: from tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA by eole.ERE.UMontreal.CA (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1042/5.17)
id UAA29855; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:18:37 -0400
Received: by tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1042/5.17)
id UAA22760; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:18:36 -0400
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:18:36 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
From: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
In-Reply-To: <l03010d02b00e4bc9a234@[129.137.84.93]>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9708062025.A22629-0100000@tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by listproc.mail.cornell.edu id UAA02924
On Wed, 6 Aug 1997 Greg.MacGowan@LAW.UC.EDU wrote:
> Although Julia makes many strong comments about the advantages and
> disadvantages
> of the ETD DTD, I would like to focus on one comment in particular:
>
> >In the short term, encoding one's thesis *somehow*
> >probably seems like the important goal.
>
> If we are to expect the students themselves to tag their dissertations, how
> can we make the process as simple and clear as possible, first to avoid bad
> tagging, and second to ensure consistent tagging (both within and between
> documents)? Not all Ph.D. candidates will have the same level of desire for
> wrestling with the tagging conundrums that so many of us take such great
> pleasure in. (-;
Universities should do the tagging according to some agreed-upon, open
norm and, to that end, should develop or identify good cheap conversion
tools that should be part of some set-up similar to what allowed Linux to
get moving nicely.
Best,
Jean-Claude Guédon
>From m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu Wed Aug 6 21:49:39 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA04210
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 21:49:37 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA23454
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 21:49:37 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from smtp2.utexas.edu (smtp2.utexas.edu [128.83.126.10])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA23441
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Wed, 6 Aug 1997 21:49:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (qmail 7194 invoked from network); 7 Aug 1997 01:49:34 -0000
Received: from mail.utexas.edu (128.83.126.1)
by smtp2.utexas.edu with SMTP; 7 Aug 1997 01:49:34 -0000
Received: from [128.83.205.238] (pcl-a118.lib.utexas.edu [128.83.205.238])
by mail.utexas.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA05007;
Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:49:34 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 20:49:34 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <v01540b2fb00e93400f07@[128.83.205.238]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: m.mcfarland@mail.utexas.edu (Mark McFarland)
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Cc: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
At 8:18 PM 8/6/97, Guedon Jean-Claude wrote:
>On Wed, 6 Aug 1997 Greg.MacGowan@LAW.UC.EDU wrote:
>
>> Although Julia makes many strong comments about the advantages and
>> disadvantages
>> of the ETD DTD, I would like to focus on one comment in particular:
>>
>> >In the short term, encoding one's thesis *somehow*
>> >probably seems like the important goal.
>>
>> If we are to expect the students themselves to tag their dissertations, how
>> can we make the process as simple and clear as possible, first to avoid bad
>> tagging, and second to ensure consistent tagging (both within and between
>> documents)? Not all Ph.D. candidates will have the same level of desire for
>> wrestling with the tagging conundrums that so many of us take such great
>> pleasure in. (-;
>
>Universities should do the tagging according to some agreed-upon, open
>norm and, to that end, should develop or identify good cheap conversion
>tools that should be part of some set-up similar to what allowed Linux to
>get moving nicely.
We are preparing to markup a finding aid using the
EAD DTD and we located a vendor (Interface Electronics)
who has developed a markup tool (called Internet Archivist)
specifically designed for the EAD tag set-I'm anxious to get a
look at this software-before we found this we were
planning on doing the markup in Word styles then letting
Dynatext parse the file...we'll serve it up using the Dynaweb server.
Of course, we may still use Word, but we'll see...
Yes, I think a good tool set is real important to making
authors feel warm and cozy about marking up their stuff.
Mark McFarland
UT Austin-General Libraries
>From Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu Thu Aug 7 11:17:09 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA21210
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:17:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA25586
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:17:07 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from brown.edu (brown.edu [128.148.128.9])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA25563
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:17:06 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
Received: from [128.148.157.102] (hathor.wwp.brown.edu [128.148.157.102])
by brown.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA01509
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:17:04 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: Julia_Flanders@postoffice.Brown.edu
Message-Id: <v02130500b00f8a2889b6@[128.148.157.102]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:18:43 -0400
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: Re: E-dissertations
Greg MacGowan said:
>However, since the 2 formats are sure to overlap for some time, I would
>suggest that the stylesheet play a significant role in informing the DTD.
>This may well result in a DTD that is, to some extent,
>"presentation-oriented." This would make the DTD much easier to work with
>from the user's point-of-view.
I think the style sheet is absolutely the place to handle presentational
information, not the DTD. But surely this doesn't make the DTD itself
presentation-oriented--rather the contrary, since it frees up the element
definitions to address issues of content and structure, and makes it
absolutely clear to the encoder/writer that the elements should be used
*for their meaning* and not to achieve a presentational effect. This would
insure against problems like future changes in the required formatting of
theses, or differences between formatting requirements at different
institutions or in different countries.
>If we are to expect the students themselves to tag their dissertations, how
>can we make the process as simple and clear as possible, first to avoid bad
>tagging, and second to ensure consistent tagging (both within and between
>documents)?
Perhaps this could be a role for e-text centers to play: providing style
sheets and guidelines on how to use them, and also providing the necessary
tools for learning basic text encoding. I am strongly hopeful that the
available encoding/editing software will continue to improve to the point
where it's not a huge hassle to get set up--I think that the *intellectual*
process of encoding is not difficult at all, it's just that it's
technologically cumbersome at the moment.
Best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
>From bpaulson@neh.fed.us Fri Aug 8 15:15:04 1997
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA27665
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 15:15:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: bpaulson@neh.fed.us
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA05135;
Fri, 8 Aug 1997 15:14:59 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from andrew.cais.com (andrew.cais.com [199.0.216.215])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA05105;
Fri, 8 Aug 1997 15:14:57 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
Received: from ccmail.neh.fed.us ([206.161.132.68])
by andrew.cais.com (8.8.4/8.8.4/CJKv1.99-CAIS) with SMTP
id PAA00608; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 15:14:44 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from cc:Mail by ccmail.neh.fed.us
id AA871078490; Fri, 08 Aug 97 15:12:08 EST
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 97 15:12:08 EST
Encoding: 63 Text
Message-Id: <9707088710.AA871078490@ccmail.neh.fed.us>
To: exlibris@library.berkeley.edu, h-net@h-net.msu.edu,
consdist@lindy.stanford.edu, museum-l@home.ease.lsoft.com,
ninch-announce@cni.org, etextctr-l@cornell.edu,
beb1@cornell.edu (Barbara E Berger), photohst@asuvm.inre.asu.edu,
tei-l@listserv.uic.edu, imagelib@arizona.edu
Subject: Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Award
August 4, 1997
Contact: Guy Lamolinara, Library of Congress (202) 707-9217
Crystal Ashton, Ameritech Library Services (801) 223-5330
GUIDELINES FOR 1997-98 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/AMERITECH
NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY COMPETITION NOW AVAILABLE
The Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition
Guidelines for 1997-98 are now available. The Guidelines may be used by any
nonfederal, tax-exempt, nonprofit (501(c)3) cultural repository in the
United States holding primary sources suitable for digitizing and making
available on the Internet. To order, view or download the Guidelines, visit
the competition's Web site at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award/.
With a $2 million gift from Ameritech, the Library of Congress is
sponsoring a competition to enable public, research and academic libraries,
museums, historical societies and archival institutions (except federal
institutions) to create digital collections of primary resources. These
digital collections will complement and enhance the collections made
available on the Internet by the National Digital Library Program at the
Library of Congress.
The National Digital Library is envisioned as a distributed collection of
converted library materials and digital originals to which many American
institutions will contribute. The Library of Congress's contribution to
this World Wide Web-based virtual library is called American Memory.
This is the second year of the competition; 10 institutions received awards
last April in the first round of the program.
For this competition cycle, applications will be limited to collections of
textual and graphic materials that illuminate United States history and culture
for the period from 1763-1920.
Program staff will be available for individual consultations Aug. 29,
during the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting in Chicago (check
program guide for location). A workshop will be held Sept. 8 in Washington,
D.C., at the Library of Congress. Call (202) 707-1087 to schedule an
individual consultation or use the on-line registration form at the
competition Web site (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award) to sign up for the
Sept. 8 workshop.
# # #
PR97-127
8-4-97
ISSN 0731-3527
********************************
Guy Lamolinara
Public Affairs Office
Library of Congress
glam@loc.gov
(202) 707-9217 (phone)
(202) 707-9199 (fax)
********************************
From owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu Tue Aug 12 17:44:35 1997
Received: from listproc.mail.cornell.edu (LISTPROC.MAIL.CORNELL.EDU [132.236.56.14])
by ACADCOMP.SIL.ORG (8.8.5/SIL-1.0) with ESMTP id RAA26523
for <robin@ACADCOMP.SIL.ORG>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 17:44:31 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from localhost.mail.cornell.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA07280;
Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:18:44 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from cornell.edu (cornell.edu [132.236.56.6])
by listproc.mail.cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA07262
for <ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:18:27 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA00558
for ETEXTCTR-L@listproc.mail.cornell.edu; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:18:27 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from mail.virginia.edu (mail.Virginia.EDU [128.143.2.9])
by cornell.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA00548
for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:18:25 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from faraday.clas.virginia.edu by mail.virginia.edu id aa03785;
12 Aug 97 18:18 EDT
Received: from Kirschenbaum (ppp-32-36.itc.Virginia.EDU [128.143.1.136]) by faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (8.8.5/8.6.6) with SMTP id SAA47342 for <ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:18:20 -0400
Message-Id: <199708122218.SAA47342@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:18:20 -0400
Reply-To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Sender: owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Precedence: bulk
From: mgk3k@faraday.clas.virginia.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Subject: electronic dissertations and all that
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
X-Sender: mgk3k@faraday.clas.virginia.edu (Unverified)
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4
X-Listprocessor-Version: 7.2(a) -- ListProcessor by CREN
Status: R
I'm coming to this thread late, having just joined the list today.
Much of the discussion so far has revolved around the question of whether
any one encoding standard (ETD-ML, TEI, etc.) is appropriate for all
dissertations, a class of documents which, as has been pointed out, share
little in the way of common content. Implicit in just about all of this,
however, has been the assumption that what we mean by ETD are essentially
print-oriented documents converted to some electronic format for submission
and distribution. As I tried to argue in my paper on electronic
dissertations at the recent ACH-ALLC, however, this is really only half a
definition:
"Most broadly, I will say that this term [ETD] applies to any thesis or
dissertation that is submitted, archived, and distributed solely or at least
primarily in an electronic format. Such a dissertation might be written on
any conceivable subject, and need avail itself of no method of presentation
or organization that could not be duplicated on paper. The relevant contexts
for discussions of ETDs of this sort are primarily library science, document
encoding, and information retrieval. Now in addition to this "plain vanilla"
model, electronic thesis or dissertation can also mean something like
hypertext or multimedia dissertation -- that is, a dissertation which is not
only submitted, archived and accessible solely in an electronic format, but
which is also self-conscious of its medium and which uses an electronic
environment to support scholarship which could not be undertaken in print.
Examples of this might include a dissertation consisting of a set of
non-linear hypertext documents, or a dissertation containing not only of
text or perhaps text and illustrations, but also digital sound, video,
animations, and interactive three-dimensional models. Here ETDs must be
discussed not only in terms of library science and related fields, but also
in relation to much larger questions about the nature of scholarly work
dissertations have traditionally been expected to perform. In other words,
for some, ETDs raise questions of decorum."
Though plain vanilla ETDs are without question more numerous (largely as a
result of Virginia Tech's work in this area; the early initiatives at Tech
are the wellspring of the NDLTD proposal and also, so it seems to me, UMI's
current passion for serving newly received dissertations online as PDF
files), there are also, increasingly, electronic theses and dissertations
written as documents intended exlcusively for electronic environments. The
web site which I maintain, and which Julia graciously mentioned early on in
the discussion <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ETD.ETD.html> is devoted to
collecting ETDs of this latter type, which we might also refer to as
"first-generation ETDs."
There has, I think, been some confusion stemming from a conflation of
first-generation ETDs with those of the plain vanilla sort. Perry Willet (hi
Perry), for example:
>I'm glad to hear that a DTD is being developed, because it seems
>to me that until everyone is using the same DTD, it would be very
>hard if not impossible to count on any particular dissertation to
>be preserved and usable in the long term. Virginia Tech has gone
>a long way in the right direction, but this last step is critical.
>I'm reassured somewhat by looking at their web page--my initial alarm
>was based upon Matt Kirshenbaum's page at UVa, where he lists a
>number of e-theses underway, to be published on various media in
>various formats, none of which sounded very permanent to me. But
>with the development of a DTD, then everyone could format their
>theses the same way, with uniform documentation. Good new
Bracketing for a moment the question of permanence and sustainability, the
key point here is this: the projects listed at my Web site (which I don't in
any way publish or sponsor or underwrite, btw) are theses and dissertations
intended to be native to electonic media. An encoding standard which might
work well for print-based theses, such as ETD-ML or TEI, would be inadequate
for their purposes. This is not just a question of needing to accomodate
images or non-linear documents and "linking"; many of the projects at my
site, for example, take innovative graphic and interface desgin as a key
element; just as we wouldn't (I don't think) imagine encoding a hypertext
novel like Michael Joyce's _afternoon_ in TEI (say), it's likewise
wrongheaded to think of encoding these first-generation electronic documents
with any standard conceived with what is fundamentally a print orientation.
Non-proprietary standards are important then, absolutely, but it's also
important that we not muddle the issue by mixing our mediums. Nor would I
want to see a situation where the availability of a set of standardized
guidelines for electronic dissertations resulted in their being imposed on
some luckless student by an adminstrative committee that didn't fully
understand all of the issues involved, but which was grateful for a
"solution" to the "problem" posed by a student wishing to submit an
electronic dissertation.
Hope Greenberg writes:
>don't we know enough about electronic texts at this point to leapfrog over
the >"first content of the new media is the old media" phase and go right on
to >something better? Wouldn't this be a wonderful time to examine the
function and >practice of the thesis/dissertation before cramming it into a
limiting model?
This is exactly to the point. One of the most eloquent voices I know on
these matters is a name probably little known in these parts: Charles
Bernstein, a poet and critic whose essay "Frame Lock" calls into question
the monologic positivism of so much academic writing, the sort of thing
theses and dissertations are all too often the breeding grounds for.
Likewise, if I can be excused for quoting myself from my ACH-ALLC paper one
more time:
". . . a shift to new technologies of writing and new modes of academic
production necessarily entails a critical examination of the dominant,
normalized, and therefore often transparent codes of mainstream academic
discourse. Theses and dissertations are particularly significant in this
regard as they are by definition the first major academic project a scholar
will undertake. Surely some professional self-scrutiny at this stage of a
career is both healthy and desirable."
I don't promise that every one of the projects listed in my ETD directory
evinces the "something better" that Hope writes of. But collectively I think
they're a start.
--Matt
======================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu (PIGLET.CC.UIC.EDU [128.248.100.54]) by
piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA72386 for
<U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 10:53:09 -0500
Received: from brown.edu (brown.edu [128.148.128.9]) by piglet.cc.uic.edu
(8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA72396 for <TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>;
Thu, 7 Aug 1997 10:52:19 -0500
Received: from [128.148.157.102] (hathor.wwp.brown.edu [128.148.157.102]) by
brown.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA01836 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 11:52:17 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: Julia_Flanders@postoffice.Brown.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Message-ID: <v02130502b00f97dcc1d8@[128.148.157.102]>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 10:04:59 CDT
Reply-To: Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
From: Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu
Subject: theses and dissertations
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Status: RO
There's been some discussion on the etext-ctr list about electronic
theses and dissertations, and it struck me that while a good case can be
made in the abstract for using TEI to encode one's thesis, it would be
hard to convince anyone who wasn't already an enthusiast that it would
be *easy* to do so. It also struck me that it would be interesting to
address the use of TEI specifically for dissertations and theses, and
produce some tools which would make this easier. The motive for doing
this would be at least partly the consideration that young scholars who
learn to use TEI to encode their research will be--if not necessarily
TEI bigots--at least smarter thinkers about text encoding and electronic
texts generally, which is a Good Thing. The goal would be to remove any
difficulties which stem merely from the apparent size and unwieldiness
of the TEI, and the fear that the learning curve is too steep for anyone
who is already pretty busy writing a thesis.
Does this seem like a manageable undertaking? If anyone else is
interested perhaps we could talk further about it, or organize a Group
or a Junta or a Cabal which could meet at the TEI conference to discuss
these matters.
Best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
Received: from smtpgate.uvm.edu (smtpgate.uvm.edu [132.198.101.121]) by
piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA72800 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 10:35:37 -0500
Received: from 132.198.103.40 (132.198.103.40) by smtpgate.uvm.edu (LSMTP for
Windows NT v1.1a) with SMTP id <0.3027D7C0@smtpgate.uvm.edu>; Fri, 8
Aug 1997 11:35:35 -0400
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <v02130502b00f97dcc1d8@[128.148.157.102]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Message-ID: <33EB3CC5.733F@uvm.edu>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 11:42:05 CDT
Reply-To: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@UVM.EDU>
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
From: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@UVM.EDU>
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Status: R
Julia said:
> It also struck me that it would be interesting to
> address the use of TEI specifically for dissertations and theses, and
> produce some tools which would make this easier. . .
> Does this seem like a manageable undertaking?
I don't know about manageable, but I'd be interesting in talking about
it, both from the prospective of a person who will be doing a TEI
version of my MA History thesis and as someone who would be
teaching/supporting others doing the same.
Did you have in mind some form of tei-etd.dtd a la teilite or would that
be too limiting?
- Hope
---------
Hope Greenberg
University of Vermont
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag
Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU (UIC-VMNET.CC.UIC.EDU [128.248.2.49]) by
piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA34344 for
<tei-l@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:54:23 -0500
Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id
2698; Fri, 08 Aug 97 12:54:10 CDT
Received: from UICVM (NJE origin U59467@UICVM) by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail
V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 3534; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:54:04 -0500
Received: from UICVM (NJE origin SMTP2@UICVM) by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail
V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 1959; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:35:57 -0500
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP;
Fri, 08 Aug 97 12:35:56 CDT
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu (PIGLET.CC.UIC.EDU [128.248.100.54]) by
piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA49638 for
<U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:33:03 -0500
Received: from taft.law.uc.edu (root@taft.law.uc.edu [129.137.84.101]) by
piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA21454 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:32:57 -0500
Received: from [129.137.84.93] (etext7.law.uc.edu [129.137.84.93]) by
taft.law.uc.edu (8.8.5/taft-8.8.5.0) with ESMTP id NAA28693 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 8 Aug 1997 13:32:03 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: macgowgs@taft.law.uc.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Message-ID: <l03010d03b011049be27c@[129.137.84.93]>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:53:38 CDT
Reply-To: Greg.MacGowan@LAW.UC.EDU
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
From: Greg.MacGowan@LAW.UC.EDU
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
In-Reply-To: <v02130502b00f97dcc1d8@[128.148.157.102]>
Status: R
Julia Flanders wrote:
[stuff about using TEI to encode theses deleted]
> The motive for doing
>this would be at least partly the consideration that young scholars who
>learn to use TEI to encode their research will be--if not necessarily
>TEI bigots--at least smarter thinkers about text encoding and electronic
>texts generally, which is a Good Thing.
Devil's advocate's reply:
And how would this be a Good Thing and for whom? If I'm a
physics/engineering/invetebrate anatomy/etc. student, why the heck
should I care about electronic texts? Why should I care any more about
electronic text than I do about how printing presses work? Why doesn't
the university press do the markup for me?
Greg MacGowan
Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
with BSMTP id 0698; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 10:28:54 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from UICVM (NJE origin U59467@UICVM)
by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 1771; Mon,
11 Aug 1997 10:28:54 -0500
Received: from UICVM (NJE origin SMTP2@UICVM)
by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 5520; Fri,
08 Aug 1997 15:31:06 -0500
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
with TCP; Fri, 08 Aug 1997 15:30:58 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu (PIGLET.CC.UIC.EDU [128.248.100.54])
by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA77710 for
<U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 08 Aug 1997 15:29:04 -0500
Received: from brown.edu (brown.edu [128.148.128.9])
by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA91740 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 08 Aug 1997 15:28:26 -0500
Received: from [128.148.157.102] (hathor.wwp.brown.edu [128.148.157.102])
by brown.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA10061 for <TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>;
Fri, 08 Aug 1997 16:28:25 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 10:27:43 -0500 (CDT)
From: Julia_Flanders@BROWN.EDU
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
X-Sender: Julia_Flanders@postoffice.Brown.edu
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Reply-to: Julia_Flanders@BROWN.EDU
Message-id: <v02130503b0112fe4db90@[128.148.157.102]>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Status: R
>And how would this be a Good Thing and for whom? If I'm a
>physics/engineering/invetebrate anatomy/etc. student, why the heck
>should I care about electronic texts? Why should I care any more about
>electronic text than I do about how printing presses work? Why doesn't
>the university press do the markup for me?
I think that if you don't care about electronic texts you probably won't
bother with SGML at all (and no one is forcing you to). However, if you
are interested enough to use some flavor of SGML, then my thought was
that you should use one which encourages you to think about text
encoding as an analytical tool. And if the student did this, he/she
would perhaps find that it enabled others to use the research more
easily. In isolation this probably doesn't look like a big gain, but I
was allowing myself to imagine it as the thin end of the wedge: if
people found it useful, more of them might use it--it might become more
widely accepted and supported, which might make it easier to use, which
would encourage more people to use it, which would increase the benefits
of using it...After a few iterations of this cycle [in which I realize
the antecedent of "it" is sometimes a little unclear :-], the physics
student would care about text encoding for the same reason he/she cares
about providing data in standard units, or organizing it into chapters
and sections: because it's part of the accepted mode of communication
and makes life easier.
If this looks too ridiculously rosy, then I offer another option: It
wouldn't be a Good Thing necessarily for the student, but if there was
anyone silly enough to learn text encoding instead of finishing his/her
thesis, it would be a Good Thing for Us.
Best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu (PIGLET.CC.UIC.EDU [128.248.100.54])
by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA60932 for
<U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 08 Aug 1997 17:49:07 -0500
Received: from em01.enmu.edu ([198.59.188.231])
by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA68630 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Fri, 08 Aug 1997 17:47:27 -0500
Received: from email.enmu.edu ([192.94.216.252])
by em01.enmu.edu (Netscape Mail Server v2.0) with SMTP id AAA176; Fri,
08 Aug 1997 16:47:26 -0600
Received: from ccMail by email.enmu.edu (SMTPLINK V2.11 PreRelease 4)
id AA871084069; Fri, 08 Aug 1997 16:47:30 -0700 (MST)
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 10:29:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: swanj@email.enmu.edu
Subject: Re[2]: theses and dissertations
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Reply-to: swanj@email.enmu.edu
Message-id: <9707088710.AA871084069@email.enmu.edu>
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Status: R
Dear Colleagues,
As an instructor of my department's bibliography and methods course,
and as a professor who requires, presently, HTML scripts as well as
wordprocessed copies of all assignments after the middle of the term,
Julia Flanders' suggestions are welcome (I now know I'm not the only one
thinking along such lines). As for Greg MacGowan's devilish reply, I
might suggest that all intellectuals need to understand how their ideas
are filtered through, perhaps even shaped by, textual representations
and expectations. Grant it, the sorts of intellectuals mentioned as
exemplary of those who insist, dogmatically, upon the transparency of
language and textual representations of their new ideas and discoveries
will likely continue to do so, but these are precisely the sort of
incorrigible people who should/must be required into the learning of the
sort Flanders suggests. Those of us who understand the vicissitudes of
texts, most melodramatically represented by digitized and interactive
electronic texts, don't need the requirement as much as those who
(willfully, I believe since they are manifestly extremely smart)
cannot.
I would welcome a modified, shortened handbook of TEI Guidelines for
thesis and dissertation writers that Flanders suggests. I think it a
manageable and desirable goal to, as Flanders puts it,
remove any difficulties which stem merely from the apparent
size and unwieldiness of the TEI, and the fear that the
learning curve is too steep for anyone who is already
pretty busy writing a thesis.
Yours,
jesse
jesse g. swan
Assistant Professor of English
<jesse.swan@enmu.edu>
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
Author: Greg.MacGowan@LAW.UC.EDU at INet_PO
Date: 8/8/97 12:06 PM
Julia Flanders wrote:
[stuff about using TEI to encode theses deleted]
> The motive for doing
>this would be at least partly the consideration that young scholars who
>learn to use TEI to encode their research will be--if not necessarily
>TEI bigots--at least smarter thinkers about text encoding and electronic
>texts generally, which is a Good Thing.
Devil's advocate's reply:
And how would this be a Good Thing and for whom? If I'm a
physics/engineering/invetebrate anatomy/etc. student, why the heck
should I care about electronic texts? Why should I care any more about
electronic text than I do about how printing presses work? Why doesn't
the university press do the markup for me?
Greg MacGowan
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
with TCP; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 21:01:19 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from piglet.cc.uic.edu (piglet.cc.uic.edu [128.248.100.54])
by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA54478 for
<U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 20:56:24 -0500
Received: from donkeykong.rs.itd.umich.edu
(root@donkeykong.rs.itd.umich.edu [141.211.63.19])
by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA54940 for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 20:55:34 -0500
Received: from seawolf.rs.itd.umich.edu by donkeykong.rs.itd.umich.edu
(8.8.6/3.0-mailhub) with ESMTP id VAA26687; Mon,
11 Aug 1997 21:55:33 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost (janete@localhost) by seawolf.rs.itd.umich.edu
(8.8.6/4.0-client) with SMTP id VAA13007; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 21:55:32 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 12:10:31 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Janet C. Erickson" <janete@umich.edu>
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
In-reply-to: <v02130502b00f97dcc1d8@[128.148.157.102]>
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
X-Sender: janete@seawolf.rs.itd.umich.edu
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Reply-to: "Janet C. Erickson" <janete@umich.edu>
Message-id: <Pine.SOL.3.95.970811214630.12371A-100000@seawolf.rs.itd.umich.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Status: R
I did some preliminary work in the area of electronic
theses/dissertations and TEI this last spring. I intended to use the
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation DTD prepared for the ETD project at
Virginia Tech, but ended up using TEI. You might find some of my
findings to be of interest. The paper is at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~janete/tei_etd.htm and there's a link to
example pages from that document.
-Janet
janete@umich.edu
On Fri, 8 Aug 1997 Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu wrote:
> There's been some discussion on the etext-ctr list about electronic
> theses and dissertations, and it struck me that while a good case can be
> made in the abstract for using TEI to encode one's thesis, it would be
> hard to convince anyone who wasn't already an enthusiast that it would
> be *easy* to do so. It also struck me that it would be interesting to
> address the use of TEI specifically for dissertations and theses, and
> produce some tools which would make this easier. The motive for doing
> this would be at least partly the consideration that young scholars who
> learn to use TEI to encode their research will be--if not necessarily
> TEI bigots--at least smarter thinkers about text encoding and electronic
> texts generally, which is a Good Thing. The goal would be to remove any
> difficulties which stem merely from the apparent size and unwieldiness
> of the TEI, and the fear that the learning curve is too steep for anyone
> who is already pretty busy writing a thesis.
>
> Does this seem like a manageable undertaking? If anyone else is
> interested perhaps we could talk further about it, or organize a Group
> or a Junta or a Cabal which could meet at the TEI conference to discuss
> these matters.
>
> Best, Julia
>
>
> Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
> Brown University Women Writers Project
> Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
> (401) 863-3835
>
Received: from ccserv.ucc.ie (ccserv.ucc.ie [143.239.1.12]) by
piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id EAA68704 for
<tei-l@listserv.uic.edu>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 04:37:41 -0500
Received: from imbolc by CCSERV.UCC.IE (PMDF #3468 ) id
<01IMCKXBFXOG00F836@CCSERV.UCC.IE>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 10:34:18 GMT
Received: (from cournane@localhost) by imbolc.ucc.ie (8.6.10/8.6.10) id
KAA29718; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 10:39:09 +0100
X-Envelope-to: tei-l@listserv.uic.edu
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21]
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Message-ID: <199708120939.KAA29718@imbolc.ucc.ie>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 12:46:35 CDT
Reply-To: Mavis Cournane <cournane@IMBOLC.UCC.IE>
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
From: Mavis Cournane <cournane@IMBOLC.UCC.IE>
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
In-Reply-To: <v02130503b0112fe4db90@[128.148.157.102]> from
"Julia_Flanders@BROWN.EDU" at Aug 11, 97 10:27:43 am
Status: R
[greg]
> >And how would this be a Good Thing and for whom? If I'm a
> >physics/engineering/invetebrate anatomy/etc. student, why the heck
> >should I care about electronic texts? Why should I care any more about
> >electronic text than I do about how printing presses work? Why doesn't
> >the university press do the markup for me?
>
[julia]
> I think that if you don't care about electronic texts you probably won't
> bother with SGML at all (and no one is forcing you to).
At the moment I'm completing my PhD dissertation on SGML/TEI and I'm
encoding it in TEIlite. I think both Greg and Julia have valid points
but... I don't think you have to be doing a thesis specifically on
e-text to be interested in SGML. Some students might buy the line that
if your thesis is encoded in SGML it won't become a victim of the
technology used to create it. That being said though where I come from a
dissertation is all about a paper delivery. Unless you can convert your
SGMLized text to a printable form you are not even going to consider
encoding. Right now many students would not know how to do such a
conversion for themselves and university computing services in many
cases don't have the staff to devote to such exercises. On a more
positive note I think something like Panorama Pro has come very close to
providing very usable, high quality DTP which could meet this need. The
way it handles cross-references would have to be improved among other
things.
I would not be recommending TEIlite as it stands to encode a thesis. I'm
probably slightly prejudiced as I'm discussing SGML and encoding this
discussion in SGML. This has an added difficulty because TEIlite does
not provide very useful elements in which to encode examples of SGML.
You don't want the parser trying to parse an example so you end up
putting it in a cdata marked section inside the <eg> element. You could
use < and > for this purpose but it isn't very satisfactory if you
have a very detailed, long SGML example. It would be helpful if a
specific element were provided in which one could place such SGML
examples. Bibliographies are very important for dissertation purposes
and TEIlite is very cumbersome for encoding these. In bibliographies the
element <biblscope> is one of the more important elements. I think there
should be more than just this one element for encoding volume, page and
number. Currently they are all catered for by <bibscope>. Why not create
elements specifically for bibliographies, like <vol>, <no>, <pages>.
Also <biblscope> is not available within <sourcedesc>. I know you can
modify the DTD but if you are going to sell lite to the ordinary
non-SGML fan you need to make it more off-the-shelf. I'd like to see
TEIlite seriously revised. It has real potential as a tool for
dissertation encoding.
Well that is my two cents worth.
Mavis Cournane
University College Cork
Received: from post-ofc05.srv.cis.pitt.edu (root@post-ofc05.srv.cis.pitt.edu
[136.142.185.10]) by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id
OAA40084 for <TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 14:31:17 -0500
Received: from unixs-eval.cis.pitt.edu (djbpitt@unixs-eval.cis.pitt.edu
[136.142.185.19]) by post-ofc05.srv.cis.pitt.edu with SMTP
(8.8.6/cispo-2.0.1.7) ID <PAA21908@post-ofc05.srv.cis.pitt.edu> for
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 15:25:47 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: djbpitt@unixs-eval.cis.pitt.edu
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Approved-By: tei-l <U59467@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96L.970812150046.14891N-100000@unixs-eval.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 16:00:47 CDT
Reply-To: David J Birnbaum <djbpitt+@pitt.edu>
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
From: David J Birnbaum <djbpitt+@pitt.edu>
Subject: Re: theses and dissertations
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199708120939.KAA29718@imbolc.ucc.ie>
Status: R
> Some students might buy the line that if your thesis is encoded in SGML
> it won't become a victim of the technology used to create it.
In 1988 I submitted a dissertation on medieval Slavic manuscript
studies, which I wrote using a custom configuration of hardware and
software that supported complex writing systems very well, but that is
no longer available. As a result, I can no longer read the electronic
files from which I printed my dissertation. I could convert them
laboriously to another format, but it is easier for me to retype the
pieces I want to cite than it would be to develop a conversion script.
Lesson: Had I prepared the dissertation in SGML and filtered it for
printing, I'd be in much better shape today. Your mileage may vary.
Cheers,
David
________________________________________________________________________
Professor David J. Birnbaum email: djbpitt+@pitt.edu
Department of Slavic Languages url: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/
1417 Cathedral of Learning voice: 1-412-624-5712
University of Pittsburgh fax: 1-412-624-9714
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu Mon Sep 8 12:22:57 1997
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 13:15:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mgk3k@faraday.clas.virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: ETD discussion list
In-reply-to: <v03007808b039d5e868fe@[128.148.157.22]>
Ach, too many lists and too many Virginia addresses!
There is no ETD list at the University of Virginia where I am;
there is a such a list housed at Virginia Tech, however, and Ed
Fox there has told me to encourage people to use it for general
discussion of ETDs. So consider yourselves all encouraged;
subscription to this list is via Web-based forms at:
http://www.ndltd.org/listserv/
There is currently no Hypermail archive, but I am working with
the Virginia Tech people to change that; if and when a
Hypermail archive opens I'll post the URL here.
As for the TEI-specific list, I think Elli's suggestion below
makes good sense.
--Matt
>
> Well, I said this to Julia as she was walking by, and she said "I suppose
> you wouldn't even be interested enough to post this to the list." Stung by
> her words, I post:
>
> [This discussion seems to be going on on 2 lists at once, and I have become
> very confused as to which one this response belongs to. ]
>
> As one who is interested in following an ETD discussion, but who would
> probably not have the energy to subscribe to 2 new lists (Matt, do you
> archive using HyperMail or something?), I make the following suggestion:
>
> 1. use the UVA existing list to discuss the larger issues surrounding ETDs.
>
> 2. keep the TEImods discussion on TEI-L until it becomes obvious that it is
> too verbose, specialized or personal, and therefore needs its own list.
>
> The advantage of the latter is that the TEI community is small enough, and
> the topic is specialized enough, that many list participants would be
> interested, and would contribute, but would not join a specialized list.
>
>
> my $.02 --elli
>
> [Elli Mylonas
> Lead Project Analyst
> Scholarly Technology Group
> Box 1885-CIS
> Brown University
> Providence, RI 02912
> http://www.stg.brown.edu ]
>
>
>
===================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu or mattk@virginia.edu Department of English
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH
-------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-tei-l@listserv.uic.edu Thu Sep 4 10:14:55 1997
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 10:00:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@UVM.EDU>
Subject: Re: Dissertations in TEI
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@listserv.uic.edu>
To: TEI-L@listserv.uic.edu
Reply-to: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@UVM.EDU>
Message-id: <340DC183.3B6A@uvm.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Does the recent hush denote that the topic is being discussed elsewhere,
that there is no interest, or it it simply That Time of Year again when
fall semester sucks up all available time? In any case, in response to
the following:
Julia_Flanders@BROWN.EDU wrote:
>
> A followup to the electronic dissertations using TEI issue:
>
> A number of people have expressed interest in the creation of a suite of
> tools (style sheets, guidelines and help, possibly a listserv, possibly
> a special TEI-based thesis DTD) to make it easier to use the TEI
> Guidelines to encode theses and dissertations. Since the initial
> discussion seems to have died down a bit or gone private, perhaps now is
> a good time to talk about what to do next and how to organize the
> effort.
>
> 1. some sort of organizational meeting, possibly at TEI10? or, if enough
> interested parties will be at DRH, perhaps a start could be made there;
> this meeting would produce a more solid and detailed list of the tools
> we think are needed, and perhaps some rough plan to start creating them.
> 4. Establish a place for these things to live and a way for people to
> get at them
>
> 5. Maybe set up a listserv for discussion of the ETD issue?
Please don't take the discussion offline! While TEI10 may seem like a
logical place to meet, too many of us will not be there. We've got
online, let's use it.
Which leads me to #5: I have a listserv named ETAD@list.uvm.edu that I
set up for interested people at Univ. of Vermont to discuss electronic
theses and dissertations. I would be happy to repurpose it to a place to
discuss the TEI and ETDs.
Also, I could make a home for the tools and guidelines.
Let me know...
- Hope
------------
Hope Greenberg
University of Vermont
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag
---------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-tei-l@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Thu Sep 4 14:26:33 1997
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 14:10:20 -0500 (CDT)
From: Julia_Flanders@BROWN.EDU
Subject: Re: Dissertations in TEI
>Which leads me to #5: I have a listserv named ETAD@list.uvm.edu that I
>set up for interested people at Univ. of Vermont to discuss electronic
>theses and dissertations. I would be happy to repurpose it to a place to
>discuss the TEI and ETDs.
This is very a propos--I was just talking to Matt Kirschenbaum, who
suggested that he might try to arrange to revive/reenergize/redirect an
ETD discussion list at Virginia Tech as a forum for general issues
relating to electronic theses and dissertations. My sense is that a
general list of that sort AND a specific list for the discussion of the
TEI implementation, such as Hope offers, would be a good thing, since
the two discussions will probably be quite different in their emphasis
and clientele.
Other thoughts?
best, Julia
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Brown University Women Writers Project
Julia_Flanders@brown.edu
(401) 863-3835
---------------------------------------------------------
From owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu Thu Sep 4 15:10:09 1997
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 15:42:50 -0400
From: mgk3k@faraday.clas.virginia.edu
Subject: ETD discussion list
In the wake of this list's recent ETD thread, Julia Flanders and I have been
discussing the need for a general purpose discussion list devoted to
electronic theses and dissertations: a place where those involved in local
ETD implementation could share problems and solutions, where information
about large-scale initiatives such as the NDLTD could be distributed, and
where we could also discuss more theoretical/philosophical questions of the
sort I and others have raised.
We know that there is a general purpose ETD listserv at Virginia Tech, but
it's been dormant for some time now. One option is to revitalize it, but
someone from VT will have to speak to that. Alternately, I could set up a
new list in conjunction with my site here at the University of Virginia.
Thoughts? Is there a need for a general purpose ETD list and would you
subscribe to it? Reply to us on or off ETEXTCTR-L as seems appropriate.
--Matt
======================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH
------------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu Fri Sep 5 07:59:41 1997
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 07:46:25 -0500 (CDT)
From: Agnes Adams <agnesa@unllib.unl.edu>
Subject: Re: ETD discussion list
In-reply-to: <199709041942.PAA449908@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU>
Sender: owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Cc: Agnes Adams <agnesa@unllib.unl.edu>
I would be interested an ETD list.
Agnes
Agnes Adams
Collection Development Coordinator
University Libraries
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588-0410
402-472-3628
internet: agnesa@unllib.unl.edu
On Thu, 4 Sep 1997 mgk3k@faraday.clas.virginia.edu wrote:
> In the wake of this list's recent ETD thread, Julia Flanders and I have been
> discussing the need for a general purpose discussion list devoted to
> electronic theses and dissertations: a place where those involved in local
> ETD implementation could share problems and solutions, where information
> about large-scale initiatives such as the NDLTD could be distributed, and
> where we could also discuss more theoretical/philosophical questions of the
> sort I and others have raised.
>
> We know that there is a general purpose ETD listserv at Virginia Tech, but
> it's been dormant for some time now. One option is to revitalize it, but
> someone from VT will have to speak to that. Alternately, I could set up a
> new list in conjunction with my site here at the University of Virginia.
>
> Thoughts? Is there a need for a general purpose ETD list and would you
> subscribe to it? Reply to us on or off ETEXTCTR-L as seems appropriate.
>
> --Matt
>
>
> ======================================================================
> Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
> mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English
> http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-tei-l@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Fri Sep 5 10:24:46 1997
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 10:16:10 -0500 (CDT)
From: Peter Flynn <pflynn@imbolc.ucc.ie>
Subject: Re: Dissertations in TEI
Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
<TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
X-Sender: pflynn@imbolc.ucc.ie
To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
At 10:00 04/09/97 -0500, Hope wrote:
>Does the recent hush denote that the topic is being discussed elsewhere,
>that there is no interest, or it it simply That Time of Year again when
>fall semester sucks up all available time?
Actually this side of the pond it's that time of year when you run
around like the proverbial fly trying to get the backlog cleared
_before_ the new clutch of students hatches (early Oct for us).
[snip]
>Please don't take the discussion offline! While TEI10 may seem like a
>logical place to meet, too many of us will not be there. We've got
>online, let's use it.
My $0.02:
* Yes, act now; not everyone can make TEI.10
* A teithes.dtd would be a nice idea, especially if it added some
smarts
* I too have a LISTSERV host if needed: maybe a peered list so that
the non-North-American potential users don't feel alienated?
* we should involve the library people, and also the univ admins, who
have in the past have by default been the people who specified the
formats of theses
* It all needs _documentation_
///Peter
-------------------------------------------------
From owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu Fri Sep 5 10:48:42 1997
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 11:45:17 -0400
Reply-To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Sender: owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
From: Julia_Flanders@Brown.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Cc: Syd_Bauman@Brown.edu
Subject: TEI DTD workshop
[Apologies for any cross-posting]
Request for Participation: Workshop on TEI DTD Extensions
A considerable number of projects have been using the TEI to encode primary
sources for some time. Many of us have found it necessary to extend the TEI
DTD in various ways, either to deal with idiosyncratic or unforeseen
content, or to accommodate particular methodological or analytical goals.
Now it's time to compare notes: have we all been inventing the same wheels?
are any of them rounder than others? is any standardization desirable or
possible?
The Brown University Women Writers Project proposes to sponsor a workshop
to address these issues. This workshop is intended to bring together
representatives from projects whose chief use of the TEI Guidelines is the
encoding of primary texts, and who have found it necessary to add
extensions to the TEI DTD. Its goal is to foster lively discussion of the
various projects' DTD modifications, particularly as they relate to
encoding methods and aims. We hope to compare the approaches taken by
different projects, discover whether their extensions are functionally
similar or dissimilar, and learn from each other's experience.
The workshop will take place at Brown University either immediately before
or immediately after the TEI 10 conference, at one of the two following
times:
Friday November 14, 9:00-11:00 am
Sunday November 16, 1:00-3:00 pm
Refreshments will be served.
Those wishing to participate should indicate if either of these times is
impossible; we will schedule for maximum participation.
Requirements
We ask that anyone wishing to participate in this workshop send a 2-3
paragraph statement of interest to Syd_Bauman@brown.edu by Monday October
20. This statement should include a brief description of your project, the
extensions you've made, and your motivations in doing so. To allow for
productive discussion, attendance will be limited to 10 participants. More
than one participant per project will be welcome if space permits. We will
confirm the list of participants by October 27.
Sydney Bauman, Programmer/Analyst
Julia Flanders, Textbase Editor
Women Writers Project
Brown University
---------------------------------------------------------------
From owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu Mon Sep 8 10:31:54 1997
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 11:18:51 -0500
From: Elli Mylonas <elli_mylonas@brown.edu>
Subject: Re: ETD discussion list
Sender: owner-ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
X-Sender: elli@swansong.stg.brown.edu
To: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Reply-to: ETEXTCTR-L@cornell.edu
Message-id: <v03007808b039d5e868fe@[128.148.157.22]>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Precedence: bulk
X-PH: V4.1@cornell.edu (Cornell Modified)
X-Listprocessor-version: 7.2(a) -- ListProcessor by CREN
Status: R
Well, I said this to Julia as she was walking by, and she said "I suppose
you wouldn't even be interested enough to post this to the list." Stung by
her words, I post:
[This discussion seems to be going on on 2 lists at once, and I have become
very confused as to which one this response belongs to. ]
As one who is interested in following an ETD discussion, but who would
probably not have the energy to subscribe to 2 new lists (Matt, do you
archive using HyperMail or something?), I make the following suggestion:
1. use the UVA existing list to discuss the larger issues surrounding ETDs.
2. keep the TEImods discussion on TEI-L until it becomes obvious that it is
too verbose, specialized or personal, and therefore needs its own list.
The advantage of the latter is that the TEI community is small enough, and
the topic is specialized enough, that many list participants would be
interested, and would contribute, but would not join a specialized list.
my $.02 --elli
[Elli Mylonas
Lead Project Analyst
Scholarly Technology Group
Box 1885-CIS
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
http://www.stg.brown.edu ]