----------(1) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:08:11 -0700 From: Dan Lester <dan@riverofdata.com> Subject: Re: Cost per title... (Albert Henderson) Tuesday, October 31, 2000, 8:34:58 AM, you wrote: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:16:58 -0500 From: Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Cost per title... (Dan Lester) Thanks for your question. Style manuals generally are attempting to embrace the new technology. The technology -- which was not designed to meet the norms of science and scholarship -- has not made it easier. ---- That is a most interesting comment. As you may know, the web was first designed specifically to serve scholars working from CERN. The fact that it served them so well led to the wider implementation of the web for scholarship as well as other purposes. Yes, the web has gone into many areas that Tim Berners-Lee never imagined in the late eighties, and it will go into many more; I'm sure that printing has gone well beyond Gutenberg's original plans, too. ---- The technology that cannot deliver is not a desirable substitute. ---- The technology certainly CAN deliver. Just as with print technologies, things can be done well or can be done poorly. Of course there are plentiful examples of both in each technology, and in many other technologies as well. ---- My point in the posting quoted below is that the precision required by a style manual that asks for the exact location of a quotation is an effort at excellence. ---- Actually, style manuals don't require precision. They require that as much precision as possible be used. My previously cited examples of citing oral interviews, telephone conversations, films, television news broadcasts, and so forth, continue to illustrate that. ---- Excellence should be a priority of the academy. Editors and authors strive for excellence. Readers expect it. ---- I have no argument with those three sentences. ---- Put it this way, if a source uses a particular word or phrase in several contexts, page numbers are necessary to identify the distinctions. ---- Well, the distinctions may need to be made, but page numbers aren't the only way of doing so. They are ONE way, the way based on the technology that we've all used for centuries. Of course even with the traditional technology there may be cases where distinctions may need to be made even within a page. In addition, the fine points that you identify above are genuine, but are the exception in the total span of scholarship, although they are not uncommon in some fields, such as literature. ---- A URL for an HTML chapter is a poor substitute for a page-citation. ---- Yes, it is, particularly in the field of literature. However, electronic books or articles don't limit you to chapters alone. It is easy to make links to individual sections, parts, paragraphs, or whatever is relevant. The links can be either within an HTML page, or to a number of pages, which could even be the equivalent of "pages" within a printed work. As you point out, this doesn't seem to yet be commonly done, but it certainly could be. The burden of this, of course, is on the editors and publishers who should be striving for excellence. This is something that seems to be done well in the laws and codes that have been published electronically, and others could certainly learn from those examples. In addition, a vast number of scholarly works that are on the web now are page images, frequently in .pdf format, so they have all of the attributes of the printed work. ---- As a matter of fact, I consider URLs to be ephemeral. They should be avoided if there is a print alternative. ---- Once again, URLs aren't ephemeral because of the technology involved. Ones that are ephemeral are so because of inadequate management of the website, something that should be overseen by the editor or publisher to assure that they don't change. And, if they do change, links (cross-references) should be made to the new location. This will require editors and publishers to become more technologically savvy so that they don't accept "we have to do that" when it really means "it is the easiest for us techies to do it this way". Also, more of us, and particularly those providing scholarly resources, should be using PURLs. http://www.purl.org/ will provide more information to those who aren't familiar with it. These Persistent URLs can assure you that a URL is not ephemeral. ---- In short, a primitive technology has no place dictating style when the result is second-rate. ---- Once again, the technology isn't dictating style and isn't second rate _per_se_. Some implementations of the technology are second rate or worse. But, so are some implementations of print technology. This is not a techology problem, but a people problem. cheers dan -- Dan Lester, Data Wrangler dan@RiverOfData.com 3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho 83716-7115 USA www.riverofdata.com www.postcard.org www.gailndan.com ----------(2) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 11:32:50 -0600 From: Peter Picerno <ppicerno@mail.astate.edu> Subject: Re: Cost per title... (Albert Henderson) Mr. Henderson: If I percieve your remarks correctly, then, we are to eschew all electronic searching, databases, sources such as Lexis, STN, MLA Bibliography, PsychInfo, etc. because of the fact that when quoting them in a paper or article one is unable to find a mere page number in accordance with rules set up by Kate Turabian and others? Excellence comes in many different form, sir, and I am not sure that all of the inhabitants of the academy will rush to cancel all of its electronic and CD-ROM subscriptions in order to apply with the citation rules of style manuals. Peter Picerno ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:16:58 -0500 From: Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Cost per title... (Dan Lester) Thanks for your question. Style manuals generally are attempting to embrace the new technology. The technology -- which was not designed to meet the norms of science and scholarship -- has not made it easier. The technology that cannot deliver is not a desirable substitute. My point in the posting quoted below is that the precision required by a style manual that asks for the exact location of a quotation is an effort at excellence. Excellence should be a priority of the academy. Editors and authors strive for excellence. Readers expect it. Put it this way, if a source uses a particular word or phrase in several contexts, page numbers are necessary to identify the distinctions. A URL for an HTML chapter is a poor substitute for a page-citation. As a matter of fact, I consider URLs to be ephemeral. They should be avoided if there is a print alternative. In short, a primitive technology has no place dictating style when the result is second-rate. Albert Henderson Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 <70244.1532@compuserve.com>
