High standards and vast opportunities

The readings this week express a tension in the academic community between a traditional commitment to high standards in editorial practice and an acknowledgement of the unprecedented diversity of opportunities provided by the digital landscape. McGann describes the web as a “petrie dish for humanities sites” and reminds us that by comparison, “scholars commit themselves to developing and maintaining rigorous standards for critical procedures and critical outcomes.” Flanders echoes this hierarchizing sentiment when she situates the WWP “among a group of digital anthologies that have adopted the most rigorous practices.” Yet, McGann argues that “texts remain, in the last analysis, ambiguous,” and Flanders concludes with an argument for “capturing editorial decisions not as finalities but as contingencies, with important effects.” Fraistat and Jones are interested in the potential for “interactions between the poem and the network,” and envision “potentially infinite expansion of the traditional editorial apparatus.” But Rosenberg holds back; perhaps the most clearly articulated statement on this tension is found in the protective tone of his introduction:

The most important point to be made about any digital documentary edition is that the editors' fundamental intellectual work is unchanged. Editors must devote the profession's characteristic, meticulous attention to selection, transcription, and annotation if the resulting electronic publication is to deserve the respect given to modern microfilm and print publications. At the same time, it is abundantly clear that a digital edition presents opportunities well beyond the possibilities of film and paper.

Do you share Rosenberg’s metrics for “respect” in your scholarly and/or online reading and research practices? Do you find the arguments for shared, rigorous editing practices to be persuasive? Do you find the web exciting in its haphazard connections and sprawl and/or did you feel at home in this discourse of critical procedures and critical outcomes? Finally, what were your observations on the digital projects we viewed?