On Wed, 8 Oct 1997, Elizabeth James wrote:
> How about a conversation about the LION project?  See
> http://www.chadwyck.co.uk/lion/

- OK - for a long while LION (as I hope we may continue to call it, for
convenience, between ourselves) was outside the direct focus of a
*contemporary* poetry list, as it dealt with older, out-of-copyright
texts. The advent of their "Contemporary Poetry" section - if I read it
correctly - changes that.

The aim is to make full text electronic edition of contemporary poetry
available on subscription via the Web - so yes, straight away, there's an
understanding that you have to subscribe in order to access. Many
Universities will subscribe, since a range of LION datasets are being made
available through CHEST, the University's central software purchasing
agency (Durham actually won't be getting the CHEST package at this point
- still can't afford it!). Through subscribing Universities, all students
staff and research folk at these institutions will have free access. The
number of people who thus have access to "ContempPo" will be considerable.

The initial "selection" of texts isn't done on literary grounds, it's done
on deals with publishers - Carcanet, OUP, others to follow, in a sequence
and at a pace I'm unsure of. It's doubtfull how many of these texts will
be of direct value to members of this list, though it'll be interesting to
see Bunting, MacDiarmid, John Riley, Michael Haslam, Mile Champion and a
few others - and it will enable us to sort out once and for all if "Words!
Pens are too light..." is from Bunting or (as has been suggested to me)
David Gascoyne... I don't yet know if the selection includes *all* poets
published by those presses, or just all those originally published, or all
those from the UK, or whatever. It'd be good to be able to add Barbara
Guest, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery etc to the list...

Much depends on how future *selection* of texts is undertaken. I've had a
preliminary conversation on this, and my understanding is that texts from
the "innovative" or "developmental" poetries and presses which are our
main interest will take their place in the file, "in due course" - I'd
certainly like more news about that, as it could be very useful to those
on this list who seek to teach such poetries, and, of course, to the
publishers of said poetries, and even "their" poets. That's as far as I
know at this point. The "Master Index" to web resources outside CH's own
activity is potentially very useful: small at present, it is to be
enlarged shortly (and include reference to the Britpo list and the Bunting
Centre)  and it looks a neat idea to me.

I can't imagine that their initial selection of "poet in residence" -
Matthew Sweeney - will be terribly popular with many members of this list:
again, we'll have to see how it develops, how the selection is made.

The main drawback is, of course, precisely the one that Elizabeth points
to: as a subscription dataset, it will remain unavailable to many people.
I can't see a way round that. But I'm convinced that its impact on all
aspects of teaching Eng.Lit. will be - indeed already is - profound.
Chadwyck Healy is a commercial outfit, no doubt about that - nevertheless
I hope they'll be able to listen to the voices on this list which point
them towards work they might otherwise have missed, but which certainly
belongs in a file called "Contemporary Poetry".

___________________________________________________________
Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: [log in to unmask]   
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044    Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481               
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric                                                                      

"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."          
                                - Basil Bunting                            
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