ODA is not really aiming for the kind of document that the TEI wants to encompass. The TEI can handle the kind of material ODA has, as well as a significantly broader range of material. ODA seems to be very much focused on office documents, which is what it started out being called— office document architecture.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CALALUCA * Text-encoding from a publisher's perspective * Responsibilities of a publisher * Reproduction of Migne's Latin series whole and complete with SGML tags based on perceived need and expected use * Particular decisions arising from the general decision to produce and publish PLD * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The final speaker in this session, Eric CALALUCA, vice president, Chadwyck-Healey, Inc., spoke from the perspective of a publisher re text-encoding, rather than as one qualified to discuss methods of encoding data, and observed that the presenters sitting in the room, whether they had chosen to or not, were acting as publishers: making choices, gathering data, gathering information, and making assessments. CALALUCA offered the hard-won conviction that in publishing very large text files (such as PLD), one cannot avoid making personal judgments of appropriateness and structure.
In CALALUCA's view, encoding decisions stem from prior judgments. Two notions have become axioms for him in the consideration of future sources for electronic publication: 1) electronic text publishing is as personal as any other kind of publishing, and questions of if and how to encode the data are simply a consequence of that prior decision; 2) all personal decisions are open to criticism, which is unavoidable.
CALALUCA rehearsed his role as a publisher or, better, as an intermediary between what is viewed as a sound idea and the people who would make use of it. Finding the specialist to advise in this process is the core of that function. The publisher must monitor and hug the fine line between giving users what they want and suggesting what they might need. One responsibility of a publisher is to represent the desires of scholars and research librarians as opposed to bullheadedly forcing them into areas they would not choose to enter.
CALALUCA likened the questions being raised today about data structure and standards to the decisions faced by the Abbe Migne himself during production of the Patrologia series in the mid-nineteenth century. Chadwyck-Healey's decision to reproduce Migne's Latin series whole and complete with SGML tags was also based upon a perceived need and an expected use. In the same way that Migne's work came to be far more than a simple handbook for clerics, PLD is already far more than a database for theologians. It is a bedrock source for the study of Western civilization, CALALUCA asserted.
In regard to the decision to produce and publish PLD, the editorial board offered direct judgments on the question of appropriateness of these texts for conversion, their encoding and their distribution, and concluded that the best possible project was one that avoided overt intrusions or exclusions in so important a resource. Thus, the general decision to transmit the original collection as clearly as possible with the widest possible avenues for use led to other decisions: 1) To encode the data or not, SGML or not, TEI or not. Again, the expected user community asserted the need for normative tagging structures of important humanities texts, and the TEI seemed the most appropriate structure for that purpose. Research librarians, who are trained to view the larger impact of electronic text sources on 80 or 90 or 100 doctoral disciplines, loudly approved the decision to include tagging. They see what is coming better than the specialist who is completely focused on one edition of Ambrose's De Anima, and they also understand that the potential uses exceed present expectations. 2) What will be tagged and what will not. Once again, the board realized that one must tag the obvious. But in no way should one attempt to identify through encoding schemes every single discrete area of a text that might someday be searched. That was another decision. Searching by a column number, an author, a word, a volume, permitting combination searches, and tagging notations seemed logical choices as core elements. 3) How does one make the data available? Tieing it to a CD-ROM edition creates limitations, but a magnetic tape file that is very large, is accompanied by the encoding specifications, and that allows one to make local modifications also allows one to incorporate any changes one may desire within the bounds of private research, though exporting tag files from a CD-ROM could serve just as well. Since no one on the board could possibly anticipate each and every way in which a scholar might choose to mine this data bank, it was decided to satisfy the basics and make some provisions for what might come. 4) Not to encode the database would rob it of the interchangeability and portability these important texts should accommodate. For CALALUCA, the extensive options presented by full-text searching require care in text selection and strongly support encoding of data to facilitate the widest possible search strategies. Better software can always be created, but summoning the resources, the people, and the energy to reconvert the text is another matter.
PLD is being encoded, captured, and distributed, because to Chadwyck-Healey and the board it offers the widest possible array of future research applications that can be seen today. CALALUCA concluded by urging the encoding of all important text sources in whatever way seems most appropriate and durable at the time, without blanching at the thought that one's work may require emendation in the future. (Thus, Chadwyck-Healey produced a very large humanities text database before the final release of the TEI Guidelines.)
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCUSSION * Creating texts with markup advocated * Trends in encoding * The TEI and the issue of interchangeability of standards * A misconception concerning the TEI * Implications for an institution like LC in the event that a multiplicity of DTDs develops * Producing images as a first step towards possible conversion to full text through character recognition * The AAP tag sets as a common starting point and the need for caution * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
HOCKEY prefaced the discussion that followed with several comments in favor of creating texts with markup and on trends in encoding. In the future, when many more texts are available for on-line searching, real problems in finding what is wanted will develop, if one is faced with millions of words of data. It therefore becomes important to consider putting markup in texts to help searchers home in on the actual things they wish to retrieve. Various approaches to refining retrieval methods toward this end include building on a computer version of a dictionary and letting the computer look up words in it to obtain more information about the semantic structure or semantic field of a word, its grammatical structure, and syntactic structure.
HOCKEY commented on the present keen interest in the encoding world in creating: 1) machine-readable versions of dictionaries that can be initially tagged in SGML, which gives a structure to the dictionary entry; these entries can then be converted into a more rigid or otherwise different database structure inside the computer, which can be treated as a dynamic tool for searching mechanisms; 2) large bodies of text to study the language. In order to incorporate more sophisticated mechanisms, more about how words behave needs to be known, which can be learned in part from information in dictionaries. However, the last ten years have seen much interest in studying the structure of printed dictionaries converted into computer-readable form. The information one derives about many words from those is only partial, one or two definitions of the common or the usual meaning of a word, and then numerous definitions of unusual usages. If the computer is using a dictionary to help retrieve words in a text, it needs much more information about the common usages, because those are the ones that occur over and over again. Hence the current interest in developing large bodies of text in computer-readable form in order to study the language. Several projects are engaged in compiling, for example, 100 million words. HOCKEY described one with which she was associated briefly at Oxford University involving compilation of 100 million words of British English: about 10 percent of that will contain detailed linguistic tagging encoded in SGML; it will have word class taggings, with words identified as nouns, verbs, adjectives, or other parts of speech. This tagging can then be used by programs which will begin to learn a bit more about the structure of the language, and then, can go to tag more text.
HOCKEY said that the more that is tagged accurately, the more one can refine the tagging process and thus the bigger body of text one can build up with linguistic tagging incorporated into it. Hence, the more tagging or annotation there is in the text, the more one may begin to learn about language and the more it will help accomplish more intelligent OCR. She recommended the development of software tools that will help one begin to understand more about a text, which can then be applied to scanning images of that text in that format and to using more intelligence to help one interpret or understand the text.
HOCKEY posited the need to think about common methods of text-encoding for a long time to come, because building these large bodies of text is extremely expensive and will only be done once.
In the more general discussion on approaches to encoding that followed, these points were made:
BESSER identified the underlying problem with standards that all have to struggle with in adopting a standard, namely, the tension between a very highly defined standard that is very interchangeable but does not work for everyone because something is lacking, and a standard that is less defined, more open, more adaptable, but less interchangeable. Contending that the way in which people use SGML is not sufficiently defined, BESSER wondered 1) if people resist the TEI because they think it is too defined in certain things they do not fit into, and 2) how progress with interchangeability can be made without frightening people away.
SPERBERG-McQUEEN replied that the published drafts of the TEI had met with surprisingly little objection on the grounds that they do not allow one to handle X or Y or Z. Particular concerns of the affiliated projects have led, in practice, to discussions of how extensions are to be made; the primary concern of any project has to be how it can be represented locally, thus making interchange secondary. The TEI has received much criticism based on the notion that everything in it is required or even recommended, which, as it happens, is a misconception from the beginning, because none of it is required and very little is actually actively recommended for all cases, except that one document one's source.
SPERBERG-McQUEEN agreed with BESSER about this trade-off: all the projects in a set of twenty TEI-conformant projects will not necessarily tag the material in the same way. One result of the TEI will be that the easiest problems will be solved—those dealing with the external form of the information; but the problem that is hardest in interchange is that one is not encoding what another wants, and vice versa. Thus, after the adoption of a common notation, the differences in the underlying conceptions of what is interesting about texts become more visible. The success of a standard like the TEI will lie in the ability of the recipient of interchanged texts to use some of what it contains and to add the information that was not encoded that one wants, in a layered way, so that texts can be gradually enriched and one does not have to put in everything all at once. Hence, having a well-behaved markup scheme is important.
STEVENS followed up on the paradoxical analogy that BESSER alluded to in the example of the MARC records, namely, the formats that are the same except that they are different. STEVENS drew a parallel between document-type definitions and MARC records for books and serials and maps, where one has a tagging structure and there is a text-interchange. STEVENS opined that the producers of the information will set the terms for the standard (i.e., develop document-type definitions for the users of their products), creating a situation that will be problematical for an institution like the Library of Congress, which will have to deal with the DTDs in the event that a multiplicity of them develops. Thus, numerous people are seeking a standard but cannot find the tag set that will be acceptable to them and their clients. SPERBERG-McQUEEN agreed with this view, and said that the situation was in a way worse: attempting to unify arbitrary DTDs resembled attempting to unify a MARC record with a bibliographic record done according to the Prussian instructions. According to STEVENS, this situation occurred very early in the process.
WATERS recalled from early discussions on Project Open Book the concern of many people that merely by producing images, POB was not really enhancing intellectual access to the material. Nevertheless, not wishing to overemphasize the opposition between imaging and full text, WATERS stated that POB views getting the images as a first step toward possibly converting to full text through character recognition, if the technology is appropriate. WATERS also emphasized that encoding is involved even with a set of images.
SPERBERG-McQUEEN agreed with WATERS that one can create an SGML document consisting wholly of images. At first sight, organizing graphic images with an SGML document may not seem to offer great advantages, but the advantages of the scheme WATERS described would be precisely that ability to move into something that is more of a multimedia document: a combination of transcribed text and page images. WEIBEL concurred in this judgment, offering evidence from Project ADAPT, where a page is divided into text elements and graphic elements, and in fact the text elements are organized by columns and lines. These lines may be used as the basis for distributing documents in a network environment. As one develops software intelligent enough to recognize what those elements are, it makes sense to apply SGML to an image initially, that may, in fact, ultimately become more and more text, either through OCR or edited OCR or even just through keying. For WATERS, the labor of composing the document and saying this set of documents or this set of images belongs to this document constitutes a significant investment.
WEIBEL also made the point that the AAP tag sets, while not excessively prescriptive, offer a common starting point; they do not define the structure of the documents, though. They have some recommendations about DTDs one could use as examples, but they do just suggest tag sets. For example, the CORE project attempts to use the AAP markup as much as possible, but there are clearly areas where structure must be added. That in no way contradicts the use of AAP tag sets.
SPERBERG-McQUEEN noted that the TEI prepared a long working paper early on about the AAP tag set and what it lacked that the TEI thought it needed, and a fairly long critique of the naming conventions, which has led to a very different style of naming in the TEI. He stressed the importance of the opposition between prescriptive markup, the kind that a publisher or anybody can do when producing documents de novo, and descriptive markup, in which one has to take what the text carrier provides. In these particular tag sets it is easy to overemphasize this opposition, because the AAP tag set is extremely flexible. Even if one just used the DTDs, they allow almost anything to appear almost anywhere.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PETERS * Several cautions concerning copyright in an electronic environment * Review of copyright law in the United States * The notion of the public good and the desirability of incentives to promote it * What copyright protects * Works not protected by copyright * The rights of copyright holders * Publishers' concerns in today's electronic environment * Compulsory licenses * The price of copyright in a digital medium and the need for cooperation * Additional clarifications * Rough justice oftentimes the outcome in numerous copyright matters * Copyright in an electronic society * Copyright law always only sets up the boundaries; anything can be changed by contract * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Marybeth PETERS, policy planning adviser to the Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress, made several general comments and then opened the floor to discussion of subjects of interest to the audience.
Having attended several sessions in an effort to gain a sense of what people did and where copyright would affect their lives, PETERS expressed the following cautions:
* If one takes and converts materials and puts them in new forms, then, from a copyright point of view, one is creating something and will receive some rights.
* However, if what one is converting already exists, a question immediately arises about the status of the materials in question.
* Putting something in the public domain in the United States offers some freedom from anxiety, but distributing it throughout the world on a network is another matter, even if one has put it in the public domain in the United States. Re foreign laws, very frequently a work can be in the public domain in the United States but protected in other countries. Thus, one must consider all of the places a work may reach, lest one unwittingly become liable to being faced with a suit for copyright infringement, or at least a letter demanding discussion of what one is doing.
PETERS reviewed copyright law in the United States. The U.S. Constitution effectively states that Congress has the power to enact copyright laws for two purposes: 1) to encourage the creation and dissemination of intellectual works for the good of society as a whole; and, significantly, 2) to give creators and those who package and disseminate materials the economic rewards that are due them.
Congress strives to strike a balance, which at times can become an emotional issue. The United States has never accepted the notion of the natural right of an author so much as it has accepted the notion of the public good and the desirability of incentives to promote it. This state of affairs, however, has created strains on the international level and is the reason for several of the differences in the laws that we have. Today the United States protects almost every kind of work that can be called an expression of an author. The standard for gaining copyright protection is simply originality. This is a low standard and means that a work is not copied from something else, as well as shows a certain minimal amount of authorship. One can also acquire copyright protection for making a new version of preexisting material, provided it manifests some spark of creativity.
However, copyright does not protect ideas, methods, systems—only the way that one expresses those things. Nor does copyright protect anything that is mechanical, anything that does not involve choice, or criteria concerning whether or not one should do a thing. For example, the results of a process called declicking, in which one mechanically removes impure sounds from old recordings, are not copyrightable. On the other hand, the choice to record a song digitally and to increase the sound of violins or to bring up the tympani constitutes the results of conversion that are copyrightable. Moreover, if a work is protected by copyright in the United States, one generally needs the permission of the copyright owner to convert it. Normally, who will own the new—that is, converted- -material is a matter of contract. In the absence of a contract, the person who creates the new material is the author and owner. But people do not generally think about the copyright implications until after the fact. PETERS stressed the need when dealing with copyrighted works to think about copyright in advance. One's bargaining power is much greater up front than it is down the road.
PETERS next discussed works not protected by copyright, for example, any work done by a federal employee as part of his or her official duties is in the public domain in the United States. The issue is not wholly free of doubt concerning whether or not the work is in the public domain outside the United States. Other materials in the public domain include: any works published more than seventy-five years ago, and any work published in the United States more than twenty-eight years ago, whose copyright was not renewed. In talking about the new technology and putting material in a digital form to send all over the world, PETERS cautioned, one must keep in mind that while the rights may not be an issue in the United States, they may be in different parts of the world, where most countries previously employed a copyright term of the life of the author plus fifty years.
PETERS next reviewed the economics of copyright holding. Simply, economic rights are the rights to control the reproduction of a work in any form. They belong to the author, or in the case of a work made for hire, the employer. The second right, which is critical to conversion, is the right to change a work. The right to make new versions is perhaps one of the most significant rights of authors, particularly in an electronic world. The third right is the right to publish the work and the right to disseminate it, something that everyone who deals in an electronic medium needs to know. The basic rule is if a copy is sold, all rights of distribution are extinguished with the sale of that copy. The key is that it must be sold. A number of companies overcome this obstacle by leasing or renting their product. These companies argue that if the material is rented or leased and not sold, they control the uses of a work. The fourth right, and one very important in a digital world, is a right of public performance, which means the right to show the work sequentially. For example, copyright owners control the showing of a CD-ROM product in a public place such as a public library. The reverse side of public performance is something called the right of public display. Moral rights also exist, which at the federal level apply only to very limited visual works of art, but in theory may apply under contract and other principles. Moral rights may include the right of an author to have his or her name on a work, the right of attribution, and the right to object to distortion or mutilation—the right of integrity.
The way copyright law is worded gives much latitude to activities such as preservation; to use of material for scholarly and research purposes when the user does not make multiple copies; and to the generation of facsimile copies of unpublished works by libraries for themselves and other libraries. But the law does not allow anyone to become the distributor of the product for the entire world. In today's electronic environment, publishers are extremely concerned that the entire world is networked and can obtain the information desired from a single copy in a single library. Hence, if there is to be only one sale, which publishers may choose to live with, they will obtain their money in other ways, for example, from access and use. Hence, the development of site licenses and other kinds of agreements to cover what publishers believe they should be compensated for. Any solution that the United States takes today has to consider the international arena.
Noting that the United States is a member of the Berne Convention and subscribes to its provisions, PETERS described the permissions process. She also defined compulsory licenses. A compulsory license, of which the United States has had a few, builds into the law the right to use a work subject to certain terms and conditions. In the international arena, however, the ability to use compulsory licenses is extremely limited. Thus, clearinghouses and other collectives comprise one option that has succeeded in providing for use of a work. Often overlooked when one begins to use copyrighted material and put products together is how expensive the permissions process and managing it is. According to PETERS, the price of copyright in a digital medium, whatever solution is worked out, will include managing and assembling the database. She strongly recommended that publishers and librarians or people with various backgrounds cooperate to work out administratively feasible systems, in order to produce better results.
In the lengthy question-and-answer period that followed PETERS's presentation, the following points emerged:
* The Copyright Office maintains that anything mechanical and totally exhaustive probably is not protected. In the event that what an individual did in developing potentially copyrightable material is not understood, the Copyright Office will ask about the creative choices the applicant chose to make or not to make. As a practical matter, if one believes she or he has made enough of those choices, that person has a right to assert a copyright and someone else must assert that the work is not copyrightable. The more mechanical, the more automatic, a thing is, the less likely it is to be copyrightable.
* Nearly all photographs are deemed to be copyrightable, but no one worries about them much, because everyone is free to take the same image. Thus, a photographic copyright represents what is called a "thin" copyright. The photograph itself must be duplicated, in order for copyright to be violated.
* The Copyright Office takes the position that X-rays are not copyrightable because they are mechanical. It can be argued whether or not image enhancement in scanning can be protected. One must exercise care with material created with public funds and generally in the public domain. An article written by a federal employee, if written as part of official duties, is not copyrightable. However, control over a scientific article written by a National Institutes of Health grantee (i.e., someone who receives money from the U.S. government), depends on NIH policy. If the government agency has no policy (and that policy can be contained in its regulations, the contract, or the grant), the author retains copyright. If a provision of the contract, grant, or regulation states that there will be no copyright, then it does not exist. When a work is created, copyright automatically comes into existence unless something exists that says it does not.
* An enhanced electronic copy of a print copy of an older reference work in the public domain that does not contain copyrightable new material is a purely mechanical rendition of the original work, and is not copyrightable.
* Usually, when a work enters the public domain, nothing can remove it. For example, Congress recently passed into law the concept of automatic renewal, which means that copyright on any work published between l964 and l978 does not have to be renewed in order to receive a seventy-five-year term. But any work not renewed before 1964 is in the public domain.
* Concerning whether or not the United States keeps track of when authors die, nothing was ever done, nor is anything being done at the moment by the Copyright Office.
* Software that drives a mechanical process is itself copyrightable. If one changes platforms, the software itself has a copyright. The World Intellectual Property Organization will hold a symposium 28 March through 2 April l993, at Harvard University, on digital technology, and will study this entire issue. If one purchases a computer software package, such as MacPaint, and creates something new, one receives protection only for that which has been added.
PETERS added that often in copyright matters, rough justice is the outcome, for example, in collective licensing, ASCAP (i.e., American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), and BMI (i.e., Broadcast Music, Inc.), where it may seem that the big guys receive more than their due. Of course, people ought not to copy a creative product without paying for it; there should be some compensation. But the truth of the world, and it is not a great truth, is that the big guy gets played on the radio more frequently than the little guy, who has to do much more until he becomes a big guy. That is true of every author, every composer, everyone, and, unfortunately, is part of life.
Copyright always originates with the author, except in cases of works made for hire. (Most software falls into this category.) When an author sends his article to a journal, he has not relinquished copyright, though he retains the right to relinquish it. The author receives absolutely everything. The less prominent the author, the more leverage the publisher will have in contract negotiations. In order to transfer the rights, the author must sign an agreement giving them away.
In an electronic society, it is important to be able to license a writer and work out deals. With regard to use of a work, it usually is much easier when a publisher holds the rights. In an electronic era, a real problem arises when one is digitizing and making information available. PETERS referred again to electronic licensing clearinghouses. Copyright ought to remain with the author, but as one moves forward globally in the electronic arena, a middleman who can handle the various rights becomes increasingly necessary.
The notion of copyright law is that it resides with the individual, but in an on-line environment, where a work can be adapted and tinkered with by many individuals, there is concern. If changes are authorized and there is no agreement to the contrary, the person who changes a work owns the changes. To put it another way, the person who acquires permission to change a work technically will become the author and the owner, unless some agreement to the contrary has been made. It is typical for the original publisher to try to control all of the versions and all of the uses. Copyright law always only sets up the boundaries. Anything can be changed by contract.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GENERAL DISCUSSION * Two questions for discussion * Different emphases in the Workshop * Bringing the text and image partisans together * Desiderata in planning the long-term development of something * Questions surrounding the issue of electronic deposit * Discussion of electronic deposit as an allusion to the issue of standards * Need for a directory of preservation projects in digital form and for access to their digitized files * CETH's catalogue of machine-readable texts in the humanities * What constitutes a publication in the electronic world? * Need for LC to deal with the concept of on-line publishing * LC's Network Development Office exploring the limits of MARC as a standard in terms of handling electronic information * Magnitude of the problem and the need for distributed responsibility in order to maintain and store electronic information * Workshop participants to be viewed as a starting point * Development of a network version of AM urged * A step toward AM's construction of some sort of apparatus for network access * A delicate and agonizing policy question for LC * Re the issue of electronic deposit, LC urged to initiate a catalytic process in terms of distributed responsibility * Suggestions for cooperative ventures * Commercial publishers' fears * Strategic questions for getting the image and text people to think through long-term cooperation * Clarification of the driving force behind both the Perseus and the Cornell Xerox projects * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In his role as moderator of the concluding session, GIFFORD raised two questions he believed would benefit from discussion: 1) Are there enough commonalities among those of us that have been here for two days so that we can see courses of action that should be taken in the future? And, if so, what are they and who might take them? 2) Partly derivative from that, but obviously very dangerous to LC as host, do you see a role for the Library of Congress in all this? Of course, the Library of Congress holds a rather special status in a number of these matters, because it is not perceived as a player with an economic stake in them, but are there roles that LC can play that can help advance us toward where we are heading?
Describing himself as an uninformed observer of the technicalities of the last two days, GIFFORD detected three different emphases in the Workshop: 1) people who are very deeply committed to text; 2) people who are almost passionate about images; and 3) a few people who are very committed to what happens to the networks. In other words, the new networking dimension, the accessibility of the processability, the portability of all this across the networks. How do we pull those three together?
Adding a question that reflected HOCKEY's comment that this was the fourth workshop she had attended in the previous thirty days, FLEISCHHAUER wondered to what extent this meeting had reinvented the wheel, or if it had contributed anything in the way of bringing together a different group of people from those who normally appear on the workshop circuit.
HOCKEY confessed to being struck at this meeting and the one the Electronic Pierce Consortium organized the previous week that this was a coming together of people working on texts and not images. Attempting to bring the two together is something we ought to be thinking about for the future: How one can think about working with image material to begin with, but structuring it and digitizing it in such a way that at a later stage it can be interpreted into text, and find a common way of building text and images together so that they can be used jointly in the future, with the network support to begin there because that is how people will want to access it.
In planning the long-term development of something, which is what is being done in electronic text, HOCKEY stressed the importance not only of discussing the technical aspects of how one does it but particularly of thinking about what the people who use the stuff will want to do. But conversely, there are numerous things that people start to do with electronic text or material that nobody ever thought of in the beginning.
LESK, in response to the question concerning the role of the Library of Congress, remarked the often suggested desideratum of having electronic deposit: Since everything is now computer-typeset, an entire decade of material that was machine-readable exists, but the publishers frequently did not save it; has LC taken any action to have its copyright deposit operation start collecting these machine-readable versions? In the absence of PETERS, GIFFORD replied that the question was being actively considered but that that was only one dimension of the problem. Another dimension is the whole question of the integrity of the original electronic document. It becomes highly important in science to prove authorship. How will that be done?
ERWAY explained that, under the old policy, to make a claim for a copyright for works that were published in electronic form, including software, one had to submit a paper copy of the first and last twenty pages of code—something that represented the work but did not include the entire work itself and had little value to anyone. As a temporary measure, LC has claimed the right to demand electronic versions of electronic publications. This measure entails a proactive role for the Library to say that it wants a particular electronic version. Publishers then have perhaps a year to submit it. But the real problem for LC is what to do with all this material in all these different formats. Will the Library mount it? How will it give people access to it? How does LC keep track of the appropriate computers, software, and media? The situation is so hard to control, ERWAY said, that it makes sense for each publishing house to maintain its own archive. But LC cannot enforce that either.
GIFFORD acknowledged LESK's suggestion that establishing a priority offered the solution, albeit a fairly complicated one. But who maintains that register?, he asked. GRABER noted that LC does attempt to collect a Macintosh version and the IBM-compatible version of software. It does not collect other versions. But while true for software, BYRUM observed, this reply does not speak to materials, that is, all the materials that were published that were on somebody's microcomputer or driver tapes at a publishing office across the country. LC does well to acquire specific machine-readable products selectively that were intended to be machine-readable. Materials that were in machine-readable form at one time, BYRUM said, would be beyond LC's capability at the moment, insofar as attempting to acquire, organize, and preserve them are concerned—and preservation would be the most important consideration. In this connection, GIFFORD reiterated the need to work out some sense of distributive responsibility for a number of these issues, which inevitably will require significant cooperation and discussion. Nobody can do it all.
LESK suggested that some publishers may look with favor on LC beginning to serve as a depository of tapes in an electronic manuscript standard. Publishers may view this as a service that they did not have to perform and they might send in tapes. However, SPERBERG-McQUEEN countered, although publishers have had equivalent services available to them for a long time, the electronic text archive has never turned away or been flooded with tapes and is forever sending feedback to the depositor. Some publishers do send in tapes.
ANDRE viewed this discussion as an allusion to the issue of standards. She recommended that the AAP standard and the TEI, which has already been somewhat harmonized internationally and which also shares several compatibilities with the AAP, be harmonized to ensure sufficient compatibility in the software. She drew the line at saying LC ought to be the locus or forum for such harmonization.
Taking the group in a slightly different direction, but one where at least in the near term LC might play a helpful role, LYNCH remarked the plans of a number of projects to carry out preservation by creating digital images that will end up in on-line or near-line storage at some institution. Presumably, LC will link this material somehow to its on-line catalog in most cases. Thus, it is in a digital form. LYNCH had the impression that many of these institutions would be willing to make those files accessible to other people outside the institution, provided that there is no copyright problem. This desideratum will require propagating the knowledge that those digitized files exist, so that they can end up in other on-line catalogs. Although uncertain about the mechanism for achieving this result, LYNCH said that it warranted scrutiny because it seemed to be connected to some of the basic issues of cataloging and distribution of records. It would be foolish, given the amount of work that all of us have to do and our meager resources, to discover multiple institutions digitizing the same work. Re microforms, LYNCH said, we are in pretty good shape.
BATTIN called this a big problem and noted that the Cornell people (who had already departed) were working on it. At issue from the beginning was to learn how to catalog that information into RLIN and then into OCLC, so that it would be accessible. That issue remains to be resolved. LYNCH rejoined that putting it into OCLC or RLIN was helpful insofar as somebody who is thinking of performing preservation activity on that work could learn about it. It is not necessarily helpful for institutions to make that available. BATTIN opined that the idea was that it not only be for preservation purposes but for the convenience of people looking for this material. She endorsed LYNCH's dictum that duplication of this effort was to be avoided by every means.
HOCKEY informed the Workshop about one major current activity of CETH, namely a catalogue of machine-readable texts in the humanities. Held on RLIN at present, the catalogue has been concentrated on ASCII as opposed to digitized images of text. She is exploring ways to improve the catalogue and make it more widely available, and welcomed suggestions about these concerns. CETH owns the records, which are not just restricted to RLIN, and can distribute them however it wishes.
Taking up LESK's earlier question, BATTIN inquired whether LC, since it is accepting electronic files and designing a mechanism for dealing with that rather than putting books on shelves, would become responsible for the National Copyright Depository of Electronic Materials. Of course that could not be accomplished overnight, but it would be something LC could plan for. GIFFORD acknowledged that much thought was being devoted to that set of problems and returned the discussion to the issue raised by LYNCH—whether or not putting the kind of records that both BATTIN and HOCKEY have been talking about in RLIN is not a satisfactory solution. It seemed to him that RLIN answered LYNCH's original point concerning some kind of directory for these kinds of materials. In a situation where somebody is attempting to decide whether or not to scan this or film that or to learn whether or not someone has already done so, LYNCH suggested, RLIN is helpful, but it is not helpful in the case of a local, on-line catalogue. Further, one would like to have her or his system be aware that that exists in digital form, so that one can present it to a patron, even though one did not digitize it, if it is out of copyright. The only way to make those linkages would be to perform a tremendous amount of real-time look-up, which would be awkward at best, or periodically to yank the whole file from RLIN and match it against one's own stuff, which is a nuisance.
But where, ERWAY inquired, does one stop including things that are available with Internet, for instance, in one's local catalogue? It almost seems that that is LC's means to acquire access to them. That represents LC's new form of library loan. Perhaps LC's new on-line catalogue is an amalgamation of all these catalogues on line. LYNCH conceded that perhaps that was true in the very long term, but was not applicable to scanning in the short term. In his view, the totals cited by Yale, 10,000 books over perhaps a four-year period, and 1,000-1,500 books from Cornell, were not big numbers, while searching all over creation for relatively rare occurrences will prove to be less efficient. As GIFFORD wondered if this would not be a separable file on RLIN and could be requested from them, BATTIN interjected that it was easily accessible to an institution. SEVERTSON pointed out that that file, cum enhancements, was available with reference information on CD-ROM, which makes it a little more available.
In HOCKEY's view, the real question facing the Workshop is what to put in this catalogue, because that raises the question of what constitutes a publication in the electronic world. (WEIBEL interjected that Eric Joule in OCLC's Office of Research is also wrestling with this particular problem, while GIFFORD thought it sounded fairly generic.) HOCKEY contended that a majority of texts in the humanities are in the hands of either a small number of large research institutions or individuals and are not generally available for anyone else to access at all. She wondered if these texts ought to be catalogued.
After argument proceeded back and forth for several minutes over why cataloguing might be a necessary service, LEBRON suggested that this issue involved the responsibility of a publisher. The fact that someone has created something electronically and keeps it under his or her control does not constitute publication. Publication implies dissemination. While it would be important for a scholar to let other people know that this creation exists, in many respects this is no different from an unpublished manuscript. That is what is being accessed in there, except that now one is not looking at it in the hard-copy but in the electronic environment.
LEBRON expressed puzzlement at the variety of ways electronic publishing has been viewed. Much of what has been discussed throughout these two days has concerned CD-ROM publishing, whereas in the on-line environment that she confronts, the constraints and challenges are very different. Sooner or later LC will have to deal with the concept of on-line publishing. Taking up the comment ERWAY made earlier about storing copies, LEBRON gave her own journal as an example. How would she deposit OJCCT for copyright?, she asked, because the journal will exist in the mainframe at OCLC and people will be able to access it. Here the situation is different, ownership versus access, and is something that arises with publication in the on-line environment, faster than is sometimes realized. Lacking clear answers to all of these questions herself, LEBRON did not anticipate that LC would be able to take a role in helping to define some of them for quite a while.
GREENFIELD observed that LC's Network Development Office is attempting, among other things, to explore the limits of MARC as a standard in terms of handling electronic information. GREENFIELD also noted that Rebecca GUENTHER from that office gave a paper to the American Society for Information Science (ASIS) summarizing several of the discussion papers that were coming out of the Network Development Office. GREENFIELD said he understood that that office had a list-server soliciting just the kind of feedback received today concerning the difficulties of identifying and cataloguing electronic information. GREENFIELD hoped that everybody would be aware of that and somehow contribute to that conversation.
Noting two of LC's roles, first, to act as a repository of record for material that is copyrighted in this country, and second, to make materials it holds available in some limited form to a clientele that goes beyond Congress, BESSER suggested that it was incumbent on LC to extend those responsibilities to all the things being published in electronic form. This would mean eventually accepting electronic formats. LC could require that at some point they be in a certain limited set of formats, and then develop mechanisms for allowing people to access those in the same way that other things are accessed. This does not imply that they are on the network and available to everyone. LC does that with most of its bibliographic records, BESSER said, which end up migrating to the utility (e.g., OCLC) or somewhere else. But just as most of LC's books are available in some form through interlibrary loan or some other mechanism, so in the same way electronic formats ought to be available to others in some format, though with some copyright considerations. BESSER was not suggesting that these mechanisms be established tomorrow, only that they seemed to fall within LC's purview, and that there should be long-range plans to establish them.
Acknowledging that those from LC in the room agreed with BESSER concerning the need to confront difficult questions, GIFFORD underscored the magnitude of the problem of what to keep and what to select. GIFFORD noted that LC currently receives some 31,000 items per day, not counting electronic materials, and argued for much more distributed responsibility in order to maintain and store electronic information.
BESSER responded that the assembled group could be viewed as a starting point, whose initial operating premise could be helping to move in this direction and defining how LC could do so, for example, in areas of standardization or distribution of responsibility.
FLEISCHHAUER added that AM was fully engaged, wrestling with some of the questions that pertain to the conversion of older historical materials, which would be one thing that the Library of Congress might do. Several points mentioned by BESSER and several others on this question have a much greater impact on those who are concerned with cataloguing and the networking of bibliographic information, as well as preservation itself.
Speaking directly to AM, which he considered was a largely uncopyrighted database, LYNCH urged development of a network version of AM, or consideration of making the data in it available to people interested in doing network multimedia. On account of the current great shortage of digital data that is both appealing and unencumbered by complex rights problems, this course of action could have a significant effect on making network multimedia a reality.
In this connection, FLEISCHHAUER reported on a fragmentary prototype in LC's Office of Information Technology Services that attempts to associate digital images of photographs with cataloguing information in ways that work within a local area network—a step, so to say, toward AM's construction of some sort of apparatus for access. Further, AM has attempted to use standard data forms in order to help make that distinction between the access tools and the underlying data, and thus believes that the database is networkable.
A delicate and agonizing policy question for LC, however, which comes back to resources and unfortunately has an impact on this, is to find some appropriate, honorable, and legal cost-recovery possibilities. A certain skittishness concerning cost-recovery has made people unsure exactly what to do. AM would be highly receptive to discussing further LYNCH's offer to test or demonstrate its database in a network environment, FLEISCHHAUER said.
Returning the discussion to what she viewed as the vital issue of electronic deposit, BATTIN recommended that LC initiate a catalytic process in terms of distributed responsibility, that is, bring together the distributed organizations and set up a study group to look at all these issues and see where we as a nation should move. The broader issues of how we deal with the management of electronic information will not disappear, but only grow worse.
LESK took up this theme and suggested that LC attempt to persuade one major library in each state to deal with its state equivalent publisher, which might produce a cooperative project that would be equitably distributed around the country, and one in which LC would be dealing with a minimal number of publishers and minimal copyright problems.
GRABER remarked the recent development in the scientific community of a willingness to use SGML and either deposit or interchange on a fairly standardized format. He wondered if a similar movement was taking place in the humanities. Although the National Library of Medicine found only a few publishers to cooperate in a like venture two or three years ago, a new effort might generate a much larger number willing to cooperate.
KIMBALL recounted his unit's (Machine-Readable Collections Reading Room) troubles with the commercial publishers of electronic media in acquiring materials for LC's collections, in particular the publishers' fear that they would not be able to cover their costs and would lose control of their products, that LC would give them away or sell them and make profits from them. He doubted that the publishing industry was prepared to move into this area at the moment, given its resistance to allowing LC to use its machine-readable materials as the Library would like.
The copyright law now addresses compact disk as a medium, and LC can request one copy of that, or two copies if it is the only version, and can request copies of software, but that fails to address magazines or books or anything like that which is in machine-readable form.
GIFFORD acknowledged the thorny nature of this issue, which he illustrated with the example of the cumbersome process involved in putting a copy of a scientific database on a LAN in LC's science reading room. He also acknowledged that LC needs help and could enlist the energies and talents of Workshop participants in thinking through a number of these problems.
GIFFORD returned the discussion to getting the image and text people to think through together where they want to go in the long term. MYLONAS conceded that her experience at the Pierce Symposium the previous week at Georgetown University and this week at LC had forced her to reevaluate her perspective on the usefulness of text as images. MYLONAS framed the issues in a series of questions: How do we acquire machine-readable text? Do we take pictures of it and perform OCR on it later? Is it important to obtain very high-quality images and text, etc.? FLEISCHHAUER agreed with MYLONAS's framing of strategic questions, adding that a large institution such as LC probably has to do all of those things at different times. Thus, the trick is to exercise judgment. The Workshop had added to his and AM's considerations in making those judgments. Concerning future meetings or discussions, MYLONAS suggested that screening priorities would be helpful.
WEIBEL opined that the diversity reflected in this group was a sign both of the health and of the immaturity of the field, and more time would have to pass before we convince one another concerning standards.
An exchange between MYLONAS and BATTIN clarified the point that the driving force behind both the Perseus and the Cornell Xerox projects was the preservation of knowledge for the future, not simply for particular research use. In the case of Perseus, MYLONAS said, the assumption was that the texts would not be entered again into electronically readable form. SPERBERG-McQUEEN added that a scanned image would not serve as an archival copy for purposes of preservation in the case of, say, the Bill of Rights, in the sense that the scanned images are effectively the archival copies for the Cornell mathematics books.
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Appendix I: PROGRAM
9-10 June 1992
Library of CongressWashington, D.C.
Supported by a Grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Tuesday, 9 June 1992
8:30 AM Coffee and Danish, registration
9:00 AM Welcome
Prosser Gifford, Director for Scholarly Programs, and CarlFleischhauer, Coordinator, American Memory, Library ofCongress
9:l5 AM Session I. Content in a New Form: Who Will Use It and WhatWill They Do?
Broad description of the range of electronic information.Characterization of who uses it and how it is or may be used.In addition to a look at scholarly uses, this session willinclude a presentation on use by students (K-12 and college)and the general public.
Moderator: James DalyAvra Michelson, Archival Research and Evaluation Staff,National Archives and Records Administration (Overview)Susan H. Veccia, Team Leader, American Memory, User Evaluation,andJoanne Freeman, Associate Coordinator, American Memory, Libraryof Congress (Beyond the scholar)
10:30- 11:00 AM Break
11:00 AM Session II. Show and Tell.
Each presentation to consist of a fifteen-minutestatement/show; group discussion will follow lunch.
Moderator: Jacqueline Hess, Director, National DemonstrationLab
1. A classics project, stressing texts and text retrievalmore than multimedia: Perseus Project, HarvardUniversityElli Mylonas, Managing Editor
2. Other humanities projects employing the emerging norms of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI): Chadwyck-Healey's The English Poetry Full Text Database and/or Patrologia Latina Database Eric M. Calaluca, Vice President, Chadwyck-Healey, Inc.
3. American MemoryCarl Fleischhauer, Coordinator, andRicky Erway, Associate Coordinator, Library of Congress
4. Founding Fathers example from Packard HumanitiesInstitute: The Papers of George Washington, Universityof VirginiaDorothy Twohig, Managing Editor, and/orDavid Woodley Packard
5. An electronic medical journal offering graphics andfull-text searchability: The Online Journal of CurrentClinical Trials, American Association for the Advancementof ScienceMaria L. Lebron, Managing Editor
6. A project that offers facsimile images of pages but omitssearchable text: Cornell math booksLynne K. Personius, Assistant Director, CornellInformation Technologies for Scholarly InformationSources, Cornell University
12:30 PM Lunch (Dining Room A, Library Madison 620. Exhibits available.)
1:30 PM Session II. Show and Tell (Cont'd.).
3:00- 3:30 PM Break
3:30- 5:30 PM Session III. Distribution, Networks, and Networking: Options for Dissemination.
Published disks: University presses and public-sectorpublishers, private-sector publishersComputer networks
Moderator: Robert G. Zich, Special Assistant to the AssociateLibrarian for Special Projects, Library of CongressClifford A. Lynch, Director, Library Automation, University ofCaliforniaHoward Besser, School of Library and Information Science,University of PittsburghRonald L. Larsen, Associate Director of Libraries forInformation Technology, University of Maryland at CollegeParkEdwin B. Brownrigg, Executive Director, Memex ResearchInstitute
6:30 PM Reception (Montpelier Room, Library Madison 619.)
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Wednesday, 10 June 1992
8:30 AM Coffee and Danish
9:00 AM Session IV. Image Capture, Text Capture, Overview of Text andImage Storage Formats.
Moderator: William L. Hooton, Vice President of Operations,I-NET
A) Principal Methods for Image Capture of Text:Direct scanningUse of microform
Anne R. Kenney, Assistant Director, Department of Preservationand Conservation, Cornell UniversityPamela Q.J. Andre, Associate Director, Automation, andJudith A. Zidar, Coordinator, National Agricultural TextDigitizing Program (NATDP), National Agricultural Library(NAL)Donald J. Waters, Head, Systems Office, Yale University Library
B) Special Problems:Bound volumesConservationReproducing printed halftones
Carl Fleischhauer, Coordinator, American Memory, Library ofCongressGeorge Thoma, Chief, Communications Engineering Branch,National Library of Medicine (NLM)
10:30- 11:00 AM Break
11:00 AM Session IV. Image Capture, Text Capture, Overview of Text andImage Storage Formats (Cont'd.).
C) Image Standards and Implications for Preservation
Jean Baronas, Senior Manager, Department of Standards andTechnology, Association for Information and Image Management(AIIM)Patricia Battin, President, The Commission on Preservation andAccess (CPA)
D) Text Conversion:OCR vs. rekeyingStandards of accuracy and use of imperfect textsService bureaus
Stuart Weibel, Senior Research Specialist, Online ComputerLibrary Center, Inc. (OCLC)Michael Lesk, Executive Director, Computer Science Research,BellcoreRicky Erway, Associate Coordinator, American Memory, Library ofCongressPamela Q.J. Andre, Associate Director, Automation, andJudith A. Zidar, Coordinator, National Agricultural TextDigitizing Program (NATDP), National Agricultural Library(NAL)
12:30- 1:30 PM Lunch
1:30 PM Session V. Approaches to Preparing Electronic Texts.
Discussion of approaches to structuring text for the computer; pros and cons of text coding, description of methods in practice, and comparison of text-coding methods.
Moderator: Susan Hockey, Director, Center for Electronic Textsin the Humanities (CETH), Rutgers and Princeton UniversitiesDavid Woodley PackardC.M. Sperberg-McQueen, Editor, Text Encoding Initiative (TEI),University of Illinois-ChicagoEric M. Calaluca, Vice President, Chadwyck-Healey, Inc.
3:30- 4:00 PM Break
4:00 PM Session VI. Copyright Issues.
Marybeth Peters, Policy Planning Adviser to the Register ofCopyrights, Library of Congress
5:00 PM Session VII. Conclusion.
General discussion.What topics were omitted or given short shrift that anyonewould like to talk about now?Is there a "group" here? What should the group do next, ifanything? What should the Library of Congress do next, ifanything?Moderator: Prosser Gifford, Director for Scholarly Programs,Library of Congress
6:00 PM Adjourn
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Appendix II: ABSTRACTS
Avra MICHELSON Forecasting the Use of Electronic Texts bySocial Sciences and Humanities Scholars
This presentation explores the ways in which electronic texts are likely to be used by the non-scientific scholarly community. Many of the remarks are drawn from a report the speaker coauthored with Jeff Rothenberg, a computer scientist at The RAND Corporation.
The speaker assesses 1) current scholarly use of information technology and 2) the key trends in information technology most relevant to the research process, in order to predict how social sciences and humanities scholars are apt to use electronic texts. In introducing the topic, current use of electronic texts is explored broadly within the context of scholarly communication. From the perspective of scholarly communication, the work of humanities and social sciences scholars involves five processes: 1) identification of sources, 2) communication with colleagues, 3) interpretation and analysis of data, 4) dissemination of research findings, and 5) curriculum development and instruction. The extent to which computation currently permeates aspects of scholarly communication represents a viable indicator of the prospects for electronic texts.
The discussion of current practice is balanced by an analysis of key trends in the scholarly use of information technology. These include the trends toward end-user computing and connectivity, which provide a framework for forecasting the use of electronic texts through this millennium. The presentation concludes with a summary of the ways in which the nonscientific scholarly community can be expected to use electronic texts, and the implications of that use for information providers.
Susan VECCIA and Joanne FREEMAN Electronic Archives for the Public:Use of American Memory in Public andSchool Libraries
This joint discussion focuses on nonscholarly applications of electronic library materials, specifically addressing use of the Library of Congress American Memory (AM) program in a small number of public and school libraries throughout the United States. AM consists of selected Library of Congress primary archival materials, stored on optical media (CD-ROM/videodisc), and presented with little or no editing. Many collections are accompanied by electronic introductions and user's guides offering background information and historical context. Collections represent a variety of formats including photographs, graphic arts, motion pictures, recorded sound, music, broadsides and manuscripts, books, and pamphlets.
In 1991, the Library of Congress began a nationwide evaluation of AM in different types of institutions. Test sites include public libraries, elementary and secondary school libraries, college and university libraries, state libraries, and special libraries. Susan VECCIA and Joanne FREEMAN will discuss their observations on the use of AM by the nonscholarly community, using evidence gleaned from this ongoing evaluation effort.
VECCIA will comment on the overall goals of the evaluation project, and the types of public and school libraries included in this study. Her comments on nonscholarly use of AM will focus on the public library as a cultural and community institution, often bridging the gap between formal and informal education. FREEMAN will discuss the use of AM in school libraries. Use by students and teachers has revealed some broad questions about the use of electronic resources, as well as definite benefits gained by the "nonscholar." Topics will include the problem of grasping content and context in an electronic environment, the stumbling blocks created by "new" technologies, and the unique skills and interests awakened through use of electronic resources.
Elli MYLONAS The Perseus Project: Interactive Sources andStudies in Classical Greece
The Perseus Project (5) has just released Perseus 1.0, the first publicly available version of its hypertextual database of multimedia materials on classical Greece. Perseus is designed to be used by a wide audience, comprised of readers at the student and scholar levels. As such, it must be able to locate information using different strategies, and it must contain enough detail to serve the different needs of its users. In addition, it must be delivered so that it is affordable to its target audience. [These problems and the solutions we chose are described in Mylonas, "An Interface to Classical Greek Civilization," JASIS 43:2, March 1992.]
In order to achieve its objective, the project staff decided to make a conscious separation between selecting and converting textual, database, and image data on the one hand, and putting it into a delivery system on the other. That way, it is possible to create the electronic data without thinking about the restrictions of the delivery system. We have made a great effort to choose system-independent formats for our data, and to put as much thought and work as possible into structuring it so that the translation from paper to electronic form will enhance the value of the data. [A discussion of these solutions as of two years ago is in Elli Mylonas, Gregory Crane, Kenneth Morrell, and D. Neel Smith, "The Perseus Project: Data in the Electronic Age," in Accessing Antiquity: The Computerization of Classical Databases, J. Solomon and T. Worthen (eds.), University of Arizona Press, in press.]
Much of the work on Perseus is focused on collecting and converting the data on which the project is based. At the same time, it is necessary to provide means of access to the information, in order to make it usable, and them to investigate how it is used. As we learn more about what students and scholars from different backgrounds do with Perseus, we can adjust our data collection, and also modify the system to accommodate them. In creating a delivery system for general use, we have tried to avoid favoring any one type of use by allowing multiple forms of access to and navigation through the system.