Daniel Sondheim presented a paper the INKE Textual Studies team’s conference Beyond Accessibility: Textual Studies in the 21st Century, in Victoria, BC. The paper was written with the help of Geoffrey Rockwell, Stan Ruecker, Mihaela Ilovan, Luciano Frizzera, and Jennifer Windsor, and was entitled “From Print to the Web and Back: The Current State of Scholarly Editions.”

Abstract: “The change from paper-based text to electronic text is one of those elementary shifts like the change from manuscript to print that is so revolutionary we can only glimpse at this point what it entails.” (Jerome McGann, The Rationale of Hypertext. p. 28)

The interactions between digital scholarly editions and print-based ones have become increasingly complex over the past 15-20 years. Jerome McGann, for example, notes as early as 1996 that “When we use books to study books… the scale of the tools seriously limits the possible results…” (McGann 12). Peter Shillingsburg echoes this sentiment a decade later, stating that “electronic scholarly editions… offer to both editors and edition users considerably more than was possible in print editions” (Shillingsburg 97). Though this opinion is shared by most scholars producing digital editions, a number have also published printed versions after launching digital versions, including McGann, who has argued for the superiority of digital editions.

To address the apparent contradiction between theoretical discourse and actual practice, we are analyzing a selection of scholarly editions that have been implemented in both digital and printed environments by the same editor(s). By comparing editorial decisions, we will identify the structures and mechanisms that are either shared or unique in each. We will provide an evaluation of the affordances available in each case and determine the extent to which works in each medium reference their equivalents in the other medium. We are interested in the ways that digital editions have deviated from printed editions and the ways that printed editions that were published after their digital counterparts have been influenced by the digital design. This latter phenomenon has been noted by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, when they state that “older media can also remediate newer ones” (Bolter & Grusin 55). Specific scholarly editions that we intend to focus on include Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Codex Sinaiticus.

This study comprises part of our overall project to develop and experiment with innovative methodologies for studying interface design. Results will be useful both for developing new digital interfaces and for understanding the print and digital dynamics within scholarly edition publishing.

Works cited:

Bolter, J. David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Print.

McGann, Jerome. “The Rationale of Hyper Text.” Text 9 (1996): 11-32. Print.

Shillingsburg, Peter L. From Gutenberg to Google: Electronic Representations of Literary Texts. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.