medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
This is too rich and relevant a subject to bypass, although plenty of
other things are crying out for my time. Many years ago, as a tenured
professor in a research institution, I decided to do all my future
publication online in electronic form on my website. There would be some
traditional hardcopy publication as well, but it would be "seconcary" to
the online materials. Thus if I was asked to sign publishing contracts
that protected the publisher's rights to the hardcopy material, I always
made sure that my own right to the online version was protected, and I
made sure to edit any contractual wording that might present problems.
This approach worked every time, even with publishers such as Brill --
so much so, in fact, that I still haven't found time to get all the
online stuff up to date (e.g. a recent hardcopy volume of updated
reprints of some of my older publications is still not fully available
online as such, although most of the older publications are individually
available, although my contract for the hardcopy version permits me to
make everything in it available online). In short, my own experience
does not identify publication rights as a major problem.
But a more serious problem, I think, is whether I can put online the
manuscript images that I have collected in a lifetime of study of
various texts -- materials not yet available from the various owners
(museums, libraries, etc.). I have lots of microfilms, microfiches, and
photos that have been used in my research and could easily be digitized
and put online if I took the time to do so. I don't know what the
legalities are -- most of it was obtained (usually by purchase) in the
pre-internet days when the possibility of such sharing was not an issue.
I'm not going to ask permission individually from all the "owners" and
am not even sure that I could still identify all the sources. In most
instances, I doubt that anyone would care enough to raise problems, but
on the other hand I don't want to spend my remaining days fighting legal
battles of that sort if the unexpected legal challenge(s) resulted.
I've also worried some about how to keep such materials available after
I die and my institution cancels my internet site. There are some
promised "permanent" solutions, but whether and how long they will
survive is still not clear. Of course, as libraries make the transition
to becoming repositories for such digital materials, the situation might
become more stable. And some stuff makes its way to "mirror sites," but
again, whether they will survive is unpredictable. So I worry, and try
to keep alert to developments.
In short, the concept of having all that source material freely and
universally available in digital form is great, and I agree. But the
practical issues involved in relation to older scholarship and
collections can be daunting, so in Christopher's words, "good luck" to
us all.
Bob Kraft, emeritus, UPenn
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak/kraft.html
On 5/30/2012 12:19 PM, Christopher Crockett wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> From: James Ginther<[log in to unmask]>
>
>> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 9:30 AM, Christopher Crockett wrote:
>>> his ideas about making (eventually) all manuscripts, in all libraries,
> everywhere, available on the web are definitely worth a look.
>
>>> he apparently has this really Weird hallucination that “The Web of
> ancient manuscripts of the future isn't going to be built by institutions.
> It's going to be built by users ... people who just want to curate their own
> glorious selection of beautiful things.”
>
>>> yeah, well, Good Luck with that one.
>> As one who is working towards helping Will's dreams come true, it needs more
> than luck.
>
>
> yes, Jim, but luck is all i happen to have in abundance, at present.
>
>
>> What it needs is scholars who are committed to sharing their raw data, and
> not just their tailored conclusions. And if that sounds too sciency, think
> about getting scholars to share their transcriptions of manuscripts with
> everyone, even as they pull together their own critical edition. That is a sea
> change, but it is already slowly happening. The main reason is that this is
> how scholarly information will survive in our digital age.
>
>
> perhaps.
>
>> As scholarship learns to share more openly, institutions will follow.
> perhaps.
>
> from my own (definitely book-worm's eye) point of view, though there may well
> be some resistance to our (yours and mine) kinky ideas about what constitutes
> "progress" in this area, i strongly suspect that it is the interests and
> actions of publishers which will probably offer the most significant
> opposition to their realization.
>
> this is particularly the case with those wretched scholarly publishers who
> specialize in targeting the Finite but Captive Market of collection
> development librarians and those (relatively few) scholars who are working in
> any particular field and who think of themselves as being in a "must buy"
> situation.
>
> Brill, Pindar, Brepols (and others) put out very high quality products, but
> they seem to do it on a "cost plus" basis --rather in the same manner as U.S.
> "defense" contractors crank out $800 screw drivers and $3,000 toilet seats (at
> least those were the prices for such items in the Roaring '80s, under St.
> Ronnie Raygun; i suspect that their prices have gone up considerably since
> then).
>
> i've never signed a contract with any of those folks, but i would strongly
> suspect that they might take a Dim View of my Act if i were to engage in
> sharing my work with the Hoi and the unwashed Poloi for free on The Innernets,
> either before or, certainly, after its "publication" in one of their
> outrageously over-priced volumes.
>
> someone else with more knowledge and experience in these matters than i can
> answer the question of just how a publication contract is worded to "protect"
> the [purely commercial] interests of these thieves from such outrageous
> depredations.
>
> i'm all for copyrights and, when i do finally [self-]publish my own work
> (sometime early in the next millennium), i will be PISSED AS HELL if anyone
> pirates it for a song or puts it up on The Innernets for any moron with access
> to a mouse to just read for free.
>
> but, the other side of that rip-off coin (or, maybe it's the same side, i
> don't know) is the fact that any copyright can --and usually does-- persist
> for *generations* after the book itself has gone out of print, rarely (if
> ever) with any intent on the part of the original publisher to reprint it.
>
> the effect of these two factors --outrageously prohibitive pricing and
> long-term copyright monopoly-- on the "scholarly community" at large is
> difficult to overestimate.
>
>> There's hope even for venerable strongholds like the British Library and
> the BNF.
>
> my reading of their Act is rather the reverse --that there has been a notable
> trend in the last few years towards "tightening up" their free access to their
> materials.
>
> i'd be happy to hear from you (or anyone else) some factoids to the contrary.
>
> thanks for your comments, Jim.
>
> c
>
>
>> James R. Ginther, PhD
>> Professor of Medieval Theology
>> & Director,
>> Center for Digital Theology
>> Saint Louis University
>> -------------------------
>> [log in to unmask]
>> Faculty Page: Departmental
> Page<https://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/james-ginther/>
>> Research Blog: http://digital-editor.blogspot.com
>> Twitter: DH_editor<http://twitter.com/#!/DH_editor>
>> T-PEN: www.tpen.org/
>
>> "Blessed are the Geeks for they shall encode the Earth"
>
>> "...debet esse oratio devota, ne mens sit in foro dum os psallit in choro."
>> - Robert Grosseteste
>
>> "Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if
> both are frozen." -Edward V. Berard
>
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