TWOHIG next furnished details concerning the accuracy of transcriptions.
For instance, the insertion of thousands of documents on the CD-ROM
currently does not permit each document to be verified against the
original manuscript several times as in the case of documents that appear
in the published edition. However, the transcriptions receive a cursory
check for obvious typos, the misspellings of proper names, and other
errors from the WPP CD-ROM editor. Eventually, all documents that appear
in the electronic version will be checked by project editors. Although
this process has met with opposition from some of the editors on the
grounds that imperfect work may leave their offices, the advantages in
making this material available as a research tool outweigh fears about the
misspelling of proper names and other relatively minor editorial matters.
Completion of all five Founding Fathers projects (i.e., retrievability
and searchability of all of the documents by proper names, alternate
spellings, or varieties of subjects) will provide one of the richest
sources of this size for the history of the United States in the latter
part of the eighteenth century. Further, publication on CD-ROM will
allow editors to include even minutiae, such as laundry lists, not
included in the printed volumes.
It seems possible that the extensive annotation provided in the printed
volumes eventually will be added to the CD-ROM edition, pending
negotiations with the publishers of the papers. At the moment, the
Founding Fathers CD-ROM is accessible only on the IBYCUS, a computer
developed out of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae project and designed for
the use of classical scholars. There are perhaps 400 IBYCUS computers in
the country, most of which are in university classics departments.
Ultimately, it is anticipated that the CD-ROM edition of the Founding
Fathers documents will run on any IBM-compatible or Macintosh computer
with a CD-ROM drive. Numerous changes in the software will also occur
before the project is completed. (Editor's note: an IBYCUS was
unavailable to demonstrate the CD-ROM.)
******
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DISCUSSION * Several additional features of WPP clarified *
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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