TO: Cynthia Shelton, Joint Steering Committee for Shared
Collections, California Digital Library
FR: UC English and American Literature Bibliographers Group
RE: Survey response on CDL literature priorities
1) COMMERCIAL CONTENT:
HIGHEST PRIORITY
-- OED. CDL should purchase and administer a web version of
the Oxford English Dictionary. This is not yet available
from Oxford, although the tagged data is available for sale.
There are two options for purchasing a search engine and
interface until CDL is ready to develop its own: KE
Software:http://www.kesoftware.com/kesoft/products/libraries.
html. Last year, KE quoted prices as follows: A five user
license: $8,143 initial cost plus $3, 570/year maintenance
Ten user license: $14,805 initial cost. Same annual cost.
We recommend the ten user license for the entire system.
This is a case in which a system purchase makes sense rather
than having each campus pay for the data and maintenance.
The second option is simply to buy access to another
university's system. Michigan is one possibility. This
latter option seems like a possible stop-gap, but not a
permanent solution. Our recommendation is that the CDL look
at the KE Software option.
-- Periodicals Content Index (PCI) and Index to the
Performing Arts (IIPA). Chadwyck-Healey. These are already
available at some UC campuses, have had trials at others, and
have been enthusiastically used and evaluated by both faculty
members and librarians. We recommend that equitable access
to both databases be facilitated and subsidized by the CDL on
the same pro-rated formula basis, used for STIC databases.
-- -- MLA MELVYL tapeload. Moving the MLA International
Bibliography from FirstSearch pass-through to MELVYL Library
System tape-loading has been a consistent priority of the
English and American Literature Bibliographers Group for
several years. Reasons include: the difficulty of gaining
access to a FirstSearch port, the lack of a thesaurus
feature, and the lack of links to local holdings.
2ND PRIORITY
-- Chadwyck-Healey products. (Some but not all of these
databases are included in LION.)
a) All the Chadwyck-Healey full-text databases: American
Poetry, African-American Poetry, The Bible in English, Early
English Prose Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, English
Poetry Full-Text Database, English Prose Drama, English Verse
Drama.
b) ABELL: the Annual Bibliography of English Language and
Literature. Published by The Modern Humanities Research
Association. (http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MHRA/ABELL/index.html)
Complements the MLA International Bibliography. Particularly
useful for retrospective literary research. Coverage from
1920 - 1996.
-- Computer Indexed Systems, eompindx@in.net, tel. 317-738-
6166. Two important indexing resources. The microfilm sets
indexed by these products are held at most but not all UC
campuses (Berkeley, Davis, UCLA, Irvine, and Riverside).
a) Index to English Literary Periodicals 1681 to 1941.
Indexes the microfilm series of the same name from University
Microfilms. The collection consists of 233 titles published
during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Davis tested a trial version of the index and liked it a
great deal; it makes useful a very expensive microform set
(currently with a very inadequate index). This index would
be used by all scholars and students working with primary
literary or historical sources in England.
b) Index to American Periodicals. Indexes the
University
Microfilms American Periodicals Series I (1700-1799), II
(1800-1850) and III (1850-1900). This tool also makes
previously inaccessible material available to students and
researchers.
-- Early English Books Online (EEBO), UMI. This forthcoming
Web product provides full-image content of the Short Title
Catalogue and should be a basic resource for scholars
throughout the humanities. Berkeley has received a
discounted pre-publication offer from UMI for the set -
$10,000 off the regular $94,000 price for full permanent
access (plus a $2,500 maintenance fee) - with a deadline of
December 15, 1998.
3RD PRIORITY BUT OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO LITERARY STUDIES
-- ABES: Annotated Bibliography for English Studies
(http://www.swets.nl/sps/journals/abes/abeshome.html). Swets
& Zeitlinger . This source selects "the best source material
in English Studies" from the last 200 years (books, articles,
videos). Unlike MLA, records are annotated, graded as to
level, comprehensively indexed. Each entry has been peer
reviewed. Given the severe limitations in subject search
capabilities and access to MLA, there is great need for a
source that provides a good interface and additional
annotations and that provides broader coverage of some non-
traditional disciplines such as film studies and cultural
studies.
-- Gale Literature Research Center http://galenet.gale.com.
Outstanding for undergraduate study, less faculty support.
-- Iter Bibliography of Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
(http://iter.library.utoronto.ca/iter/index.htm) $2040/yr UC
consortial price for all 9 campuses. An outstanding
resource, with broad-based interdisciplinary support among
the faculty.
--. Middle English Compendium.(http://www.hti.umich.edu/mec/)
Price: $795/year per campus. UMPress is willing to negotiate
for group pricing. Contact person. Eve Trager, University of
Michigan Press. "The Middle English Compendium has been
designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity
between three major Middle English electronic resources: an
electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a
HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on
the MED bibliographies, and an associated network of
electronic resources." Davis Medieval Studies faculty have
reviewed this site enthusiastically. UCD is currently
negotiating with UMPress about ultimate ownership of the
archival data for the Middle English Dictionary. We
recommend that CDL purchase the data outright and negotiate
about interface, perhaps in a "rent to own" arrangement
similar to that offered by Chadwyck-Healey for access to
LION.
-- Old English Corpus http://www.hti.umich.edu/english/oec/.
It is free now, but in 1999 there will be a charge. We
expect this transition from free to modestly-priced to be an
increasing trend among academic humanities sites.
-- Primary Source Media Major Authors Online. (http://
www.psmedia.com/site/major_authors.htm). Not as high a
priority as the SGML-based products, but of unique value for
literary study. Useful for undergraduates, graduate
students, and faculty.
HIGH PRIORITY FOR RETENTION
-- Project Muse
-- JSTOR
-- Archives USA
OF GENERAL INTEREST
- America: History and Life [not yet available, but will be
high priority when and if it is]
-- Web of Science [perhaps this could be renamed "Web of
Scholarship" in any UC implementation?]
2) FREELY AVAILABLE WEB SITES:
A. CDL should catalog all the good full-text literary sites
that use SGML/TEI conformant encoding. A very partial list
of these is included here. However, CDL should implement a
process whereby literature subject bibliographers could
select and submit sites for cataloging on a continuing basis,
much as we select books on a continuing basis:
Literary Texts:
ALEX Catalogue of Electronic Texts
at
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/alex-index.html
American Verse Project
at http://www.hti.umich.edu/english/amverse
British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832
at http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/English/BWRP
Brown University Women Writer's Project
at http://www.wwp.brown.edu
Cambridge University Press
at
http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/Reviews&blurbs/CDROMtop.html
Canterbury Tales Project
at
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/ctp/index.html
CELT Project: The Corpus of Electronic Texts
at http://www.ucc.ie/celt
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities
at http://www.ceth.rutgers.edu
Charrette Project
at http://www.princeton.edu/~lancelot
CURIA Project: The Thesaurus Linguarum
Hiberniae
at http://curia.ucc.ie/curia
A Digitized Library of Southern Literature
at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/docsouth/southlit.html
Electronic Poetry Center
at http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/
Japanese Text Initiative
at http://etext.virginia.edu/japanese
Kolb-Proust Archive for Research
at http://www.grainger.uiuc.edu/kolbp
Making of America Project
at http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa
Orlando Project: An Integrated History of
Women's
Writing In The British Isles
at http://www.ualberta.ca/ORLANDO
Oxford Text Archive
at http://ota.ahds.ac.uk
Piers Plowman Electronic Archive
at http://
jefferson.village.virginia.edu/piers/archive.goals.html
Romantic Chronology
at http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/projects/pack/
rom-chrono/chrono.htm
Spanish Dramatic Texts
University of Michigan Humanities Text
Initiative
(HTI)
at http://www.hti.umich.edu
Studies in Bibliography
at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/bsuva/sb/
University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
at http://www.lib.virginia.edu
Victorian Women Writers' Project
at
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/index.html
Voltaire Foundation
at http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk
B. In addition to full-text sites, CDL should catalog in
MELVYL and coordinate access to web sites chosen by
literature bibliographers on a continuing basis as they
appear on bibliographer web sites. Again, the process here
is much like the traditional book selection process. Only
procedures for cataloging and providing access need change.
A few sites stand out:
Modern Language Association (MLA) web site
at http://www.mla.org
The Voice of the Shuttle
at http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/
The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval
Studies
at http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/
3) TEXTS FOR DIGITIZATION:
Priority #1
Our group supports UCD's proposal that CDL fund the
digitization of all Romantic poetic texts from Davis' Kohler
collection of British Poetry. Currently, UCD is digitizing
the three hundred texts written by women in this period. To
include the texts by men would bring the total to about 1500
texts. This would comprise a textbase uniquely valuable to
the scholarly world--the only one of its kind. UCD has
already developed the technological and production expertise
to carry out such a project. The expansion of the current
women's textbase to include the poetry by male poets was
suggested by Professor David Simpson from the UCD Department
of English. He might be approached as a general editor for
such a project.
Priority #2
Our group also supports the following proposal from
Riverside. The UCR Eaton Science Fiction Collection is
arguably the largest science fiction collection in the world.
There is one segment which would lend itself to a preliminary
digitization project, which consists of 45,000 fanzines from
the early 20th century. Since they are on pulp paper, they
are becoming more fragile by the day and the ink is fading by
the minute. Of the 45,000, there is a 20,000 piece segment
(the Terry Carr Collection -- he is one of the foremost
collectors of sci fi) which is a good candidate for
digitization because it is organized and in archival boxes.
Among the contributors to these fanzines are some of the
giants of the science fiction genre: Arthur Charles
Clarke,
Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury.
This collection of rare materials would have international
appeal; more and more courses in science fiction are becoming
part of the curriculum on campuses; and the graphic art is an
added feature. George Slusser, Eaton Curator and sci fi
literary critic, author, and professor would be a good choice
for editor of the project.
4) GENERAL COMMENTS
It is crucial, for reasons of equity, balance, and academic
"politics," to add bibliographic and full-text humanities
resources to the California Digital Library and make it a
resource for scholars in all fields and of varying technical
ability and interest. The laudable progress of the Online
Archive of California is not sufficient rationale for
eliminating humanities databases from first consideration for
the CDL.
5) FACULTY CONTACTED:
Faculty were consulted at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, UCLA,
Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Cruz. The Davis faculty were
particularly vocal and persuasive in their response. The OED
was a consistently highly rated and frequently requested
priority from key literature scholars at several campuses,
for example, UCLA faculty Ansgar Kelly (Director, Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies) and Al Braunmuller
(Shakespeare and Elizabethan scholar).
