Book People Archive

Re: Personal politics on this list; real issues that should be addressed


Al Magary <al@[redacted]> wrote:
   
> In short, bad quality control nearly anyplace one looks, making one
> think that perhaps no discerning booklovers, only leftover industrial
> robots, are processing much of the world's literary heritage.
   
  A mighty YES, BUT... forces its way between my lips! So there was this
great quality control in the past over our literary heritage was there?
Like in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? How many
scholars spend their time arguing over past errors in editing and
transcription??? I do agree that many of the things Al mentions in his
posting are fine ideals to be espoused, good cataloguing, effective
technology etc, but we are at a moment of rapid transition with lots of
the public domain probably at risk, and if that means we all have to do
it again later, having first secured it the best we all can, well sure....
there's never time to do it right, there's always time to do it again.
Now Al will think I disagree with all of what he said. No. I think he's
right in that the ideals should be visible, but I think the reality
shouldn't be sacrificed to them either. Somehow in his list, the
perception and acknowledgement of the wondrous joy of being able to 
Google through information swiftly put there by millions of willing minds
and hands, is getting lost. I'm working on a vast hyperlinked index for
the Chateaubriand at the moment. I know it would not be do-able by any
previous methods in a feasible timescale, even if I had known where to
look in conventional libraries, could get to them, and could copy the
material. Is it all perfect info? No. But at least in my case it will
be accessible in context, which no scholarly editions I know of have
achieved. Then the scholars can have fun with it. I think we are into
a different way of doing things here. Let's not hem ourselves in with
the old just yet. I refuse to, anyway.

  I love books, but I love literature and its dispersal to everyone in
sight more, and Google etc should be praised as enablers even while
listing the caveats as we clever guys always can and do! Backbiting is
kind of cute too in it's way.....like old friends and lovers! Now I
have shocked you?!
   
  Cheers, 
   
  Tony