The sections of the Workshop that dealt with machine-readable text tended
to be more concerned with access and use than with preservation, at least
in the narrow technical sense. Michael SPERBERG-McQUEEN made a forceful
presentation on the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) implementation of
the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). His ideas were echoed
by Susan HOCKEY, Elli MYLONAS, and Stuart WEIBEL. While the
presentations made by the TEI advocates contained no practicum, their
discussion focused on the value of the finished product, what the
European Community calls reusability, but what may also be termed
durability. They argued that marking up--that is, coding--a text in a
well-conceived way will permit it to be moved from one computer
environment to another, as well as to be used by various users. Two
kinds of markup were distinguished: 1) procedural markup, which
describes the features of a text (e.g., dots on a page), and 2)
descriptive markup, which describes the structure or elements of a
document (e.g., chapters, paragraphs, and front matter).
The TEI proponents emphasized the importance of texts to scholarship.
They explained how heavily coded (and thus analyzed and annotated) texts
can underlie research, play a role in scholarly communication, and
facilitate classroom teaching. SPERBERG-McQUEEN reminded listeners that
a written or printed item (e.g., a particular edition of a book) is
merely a representation of the abstraction we call a text. To concern
ourselves with faithfully reproducing a printed instance of the text,
SPERBERG-McQUEEN argued, is to concern ourselves with the representation
of a representation ("images as simulacra for the text"). The TEI proponents'
interest in images tends to focus on corollary materials for use in teaching,
for example, photographs of the Acropolis to accompany a Greek text.
By the end of the Workshop, SPERBERG-McQUEEN confessed to having been
converted to a limited extent to the view that electronic images
constitute a promising alternative to microfilming; indeed, an
alternative probably superior to microfilming. But he was not convinced
that electronic images constitute a serious attempt to represent text in
electronic form. HOCKEY and MYLONAS also conceded that their experience
at the Pierce Symposium the previous week at Georgetown University and
the present conference at the Library of Congress had compelled them to
reevaluate their perspective on the usefulness of text as images.
Attendees could see that the text and image advocates were in
constructive tension, so to say.
Three nonTEI presentations described approaches to preparing
machine-readable text that are less rigorous and thus less expensive. In
the case of the Papers of George Washington, Dorothy TWOHIG explained
that the digital version will provide a not-quite-perfect rendering of
the transcribed text--some 135,000 documents, available for research
during the decades while the perfect or print version is completed.
Members of the American Memory team and the staff of NAL's Text
Digitization Program (see below) also outlined a middle ground concerning
searchable texts. In the case of American Memory, contractors produce
texts with about 99-percent accuracy that serve as "browse" or
"reference" versions of written or printed originals. End users who need
faithful copies or perfect renditions must refer to accompanying sets of
digital facsimile images or consult copies of the originals in a nearby
library or archive. American Memory staff argued that the high cost of
producing 100-percent accurate copies would prevent LC from offering
access to large parts of its collections.