Since few of the editors involved in the Founding Fathers CD-ROM editions
are technical experts in any sense, I hope to point out in my discussion
of our experience how many of these electronic innovations can be used
successfully by scholars who are novices in the world of new technology.
One of the major concerns of the sponsors of the multitude of new
scholarly editions is the limited audience reached by the published
volumes. Most of these editions are being published in small quantities
and the publishers' price for them puts them out of the reach not only of
individual scholars but of most public libraries and all but the largest
educational institutions. However, little attention is being given to
ways in which technology can bypass conventional publication to make
historical and literary documents more widely available.
What attracted us most to the CD-ROM edition of The Papers of George
Washington was the fact that David Packard's aim was to make a complete
edition of all of the 135,000 documents we have collected available in an
inexpensive format that would be placed in public libraries, small
colleges, and even high schools. This would provide an audience far
beyond our present 1,000-copy, $45 published edition. Since the CD-ROM
edition will carry none of the explanatory annotation that appears in the
published volumes, we also feel that the use of the CD-ROM will lead many
researchers to seek out the published volumes.
In addition to ignorance of new technical advances, I have found that too
many editors--and historians and literary scholars--are resistant and
even hostile to suggestions that electronic technology may enhance their
work. I intend to discuss some of the arguments traditionalists are
advancing to resist technology, ranging from distrust of the speed with
which it changes (we are already wondering what is out there that is
better than CD-ROM) to suspicion of the technical language used to
describe electronic developments.
Maria LEBRON
The Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials, a joint venture of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Online
Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), is the first peer-reviewed journal
to provide full text, tabular material, and line illustrations on line.
This presentation will discuss the genesis and start-up period of the
journal. Topics of discussion will include historical overview,
day-to-day management of the editorial peer review, and manuscript
tagging and publication. A demonstration of the journal and its features
will accompany the presentation.
Lynne PERSONIUS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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