Although concerned with the technicalities of production, the Workshop
never lost sight of the purposes and uses of electronic versions of
textual materials. As noted above, those interested in imaging discussed
the problematical matter of digital preservation, while the TEI proponents
described how machine-readable texts can be used in research. This latter
topic received thorough treatment in the paper read by Avra MICHELSON.
She placed the phenomenon of electronic texts within the context of
broader trends in information technology and scholarly communication.
Among other things, MICHELSON described on-line conferences that
represent a vigorous and important intellectual forum for certain
disciplines. Internet now carries more than 700 conferences, with about
80 percent of these devoted to topics in the social sciences and the
humanities. Other scholars use on-line networks for "distance learning."
Meanwhile, there has been a tremendous growth in end-user computing;
professors today are less likely than their predecessors to ask the
campus computer center to process their data. Electronic texts are one
key to these sophisticated applications, MICHELSON reported, and more and
more scholars in the humanities now work in an on-line environment.
Toward the end of the Workshop, Michael LESK presented a corollary to
MICHELSON's talk, reporting the results of an experiment that compared
the work of one group of chemistry students using traditional printed
texts and two groups using electronic sources. The experiment
demonstrated that in the event one does not know what to read, one needs
the electronic systems; the electronic systems hold no advantage at the
moment if one knows what to read, but neither do they impose a penalty.
DALY provided an anecdotal account of the revolutionizing impact of the
new technology on his previous methods of research in the field of classics.
His account, by extrapolation, served to illustrate in part the arguments
made by MICHELSON concerning the positive effects of the sudden and radical
transformation being wrought in the ways scholars work.
Susan VECCIA and Joanne FREEMAN delineated the use of electronic
materials outside the university. The most interesting aspect of their
use, FREEMAN said, could be seen as a paradox: teachers in elementary
and secondary schools requested access to primary source materials but,
at the same time, found that "primariness" itself made these materials
difficult for their students to use.