SOCIETY FOR EARLY ENGLISH AND NORSE ELECTRONIC TEXTS
We announce with this notice, which we are sending to
several related lists, the formation of a new scholarly organiza-
tion, The Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts
(SEENET). SEENET will procure, produce, and disseminate scholar-
ly electronic editions of Old Norse, Old English and Middle
English texts. We will combine the full capacities of computer
technology with the highest standards of traditional scholarly
editing to publish machine-readable texts with reliable introduc-
tory materials, annotations, and apparatus. Texts will conform
to the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) guidelines for markup in
the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) format.
An electronic text offers unprecedented advantages to
historians, literary critics, linguists, and editors. Unlike
earlier, printed critical texts, the electronic text permits
manipulations of individual manuscripts, archetypes, and critical
texts as well as combinations of each. Such texts lend them-
selves to sophisticated searches, concordancing, collations, and
other forms of text retrieval. Editors may present in full both
"good" and "bad" manuscripts, permitting literary historians to
study the history of the reception of the text as shown by
scribal changes or marginal annotations. Historical linguists
may study developments in the history of the language through
access to large databases of scribal spellings in all the dia-
lects and time periods reflected in many different textual
traditions. Scholars interested in stylistic analysis are able
to make fuller and more complete studies of metrical, lexical, or
syntactic patterning than are possible with printed texts.
Moreover, the extremely flexible nature of an electronic text is
ideal for representing complex textual traditions, even of works
like Piers Plowman, where editors confront high degrees of ambi-
guity and uncertainty. Electronic editions will accommodate
scholars who prefer "best text" documentary editions as well as
those who want the best possible modern editorial reconstruc-
tions.
Questions of the accessibility and quality of electronic
texts are, therefore, a matter of current concern to a scholarly
community increasingly enabled by electronic media. We are all
aware that the limitations imposed by the printed codex need no
longer constrain our historical, cultural, linguistic, or textual
scholarship. Nevertheless, the institutional means for producing
and disseminating reliable electronic texts are at present
haphazard and inadequate. Scholars familiar with the Oxford Text
Archive or with the Anglo-Saxon corpus know only too well how
various is the quality of texts in those useful collections.
Meanwhile, novice editors enthusiastic about computing are
adapting older printed editions for more or less elaborate forms
of textual manipulation. Unhappily, such editions are more often
selected for the single reason that they are out of copyright
than for the quality of their texts. Furthermore, large and
extremely costly commercial projects such as the Chadwyck-Healey
version of the Patrologia Latina or their similar corpus of
English poetry have become means of disseminating older, obsolete
editions. Such collections are too immediately useful to be dis-
missed in spite of the uneven quality of the texts thus made
available, but scholars are coming to associate electronic texts
with poor editions. If the full potential of computer technology
is to be realized by scholars in the humanities, our first and
most important task will be to make available reliable scholarly
editions, texts that are as sophisticated in their linguistic,
paleographic, codicological, historical dimensions as they are in
their computer technology.
PUBLICATIONS
Our Editorial Board will solicit, evaluate, select, and
oversee scholarly editions for publication in three series.
SERIES A will consist primarily of book-length editions
published on floppy disks (usually under five mega-
bytes). For this series we will publish both diplomat-
ic transcriptions of manuscript texts and critical
texts, or combinations of the two. Texts will be
accompanied by an introduction as well as appropriate
historical, paleographic, codicological, lexical, and
interpretative annotations.
SERIES B will consist of culturally important works
with complex textual or critical traditions. Texts in
this series will accommodate some or all of the follow-
ing features:
(a) digitized facsimiles of some or all manuscripts,
(b) diplomatic transcriptions of each manuscript with
appropriate annotation,
(c) a reconstructed archetype with annotation,
(d) an edited text with annotations (perhaps incor-
porating critical comments of previous editors),
(e) a display of collated variants,
(f) lemmatized concordances of each manuscript, the
archetype, and the critical text,
(g) critical introduction, and
(h) a glossary.
Texts in Series B will be published on CD-ROM disks or tape.
SERIES C will serve an interim function by publishing
electronic versions of useful older editions with SGML
markup, until such time as the works may be re-edited.
One example might be an electronic version of Finnur
Jo'nsson's Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning pub-
lished in 1912-15 with both diplomatic transcriptions
from single manuscripts (Series A) and heavily edited
texts of the skaldic corpus (Series B). An electronic
text of this outdated printed text would serve until
SEENET is able to publish new electronic versions of
the skaldic corpus.
STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIETY
(a) The Editorial Board
Peter Baker, The University of Virginia.
Hoyt N. Duggan, The University of Virginia.
A. S. G. Edwards, University of Victoria, British
Columbia
Anthony Faulkes, The University of Birmingham
Ralph Hanna III, University of California--River-
side
Judith Jesch, Institute for Medieval Studies,
University of Nottingham
John Price-Wilkin, Information Management Coordi-
nator, Alderman Library, The University of
Virginia
Peter Robinson, Computing Service, Oxford University
Thorlac Turville-Petre, Institute for Medieval
Studies, University of Nottingham
(b) The ADVISORY BOARD consists of an international group of
distinguished medievalists who will advise SEENET's Board of Edi-
tors on matters of policy. The present Advisory Board consists
of the following scholars:
Professors John Alford, Michigan State University; Ste-
phen Barney, University of California, Irvine; Larry D.
Benson, Harvard University; John Burrow, Bristol;
Patrick Conner, West Virginia University; Marilyn
Deegan, Oxford University; Christine Fell, Institute
for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham; Allen
Frantzen, Loyola University, Chicago; David Greetham,
Graduate School and University Center, CUNY; Thomas J.
Heffernan, University of Tennessee; Robert L. Kellogg,
University of Virginia; Kevin Kiernan, University of
Kentucky; V.A. Kolve, University of California, Los
Angeles; Ian Lancashire, University of Toronto; Michael
Lapidge, Cambridge University; Anne Middleton, Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley; Alistair Minnis, Univer-
sity of York; Douglas Moffat, University of Michigan;
Derek Pearsall, Harvard University; Fred Robinson, Yale
University; Geoffrey Russom, Brown University; R. A.
Shoaf, University of Florida, A. C. Spearing, Univer-
sity of Virginia; and Paul Szarmach, SUNY Binghamton.
(c) The Members of the Society
Members will pay an annual fee which will entitle them
to receive the SEENET Newsletter and one text from
Series A or C. Just as with the Early English Text
Society, members will be able to purchase SEENET's
other electronic texts at a discounted price, and the
texts will be available to non-members at a higher
price.
We are presently seeking the sponsorship of a major
academic press to publish our three series, and it
would be helpful in that effort if we can offer pub-
lishers an idea of the potential membership for the new
society. We would like to know what kinds of member-
ship fees would be acceptable and whether scholars
would be willing to submit their scholarly electronic
texts to SEENET for publication.
Response Form
1. Will you be likely to join SEENET?
2. How much would you be willing to pay per year to be a member
of SEENET and receive one text from Series A or C? We are
negotiating with publishers, and prices will depend upon costs,
but we expect that annual dues would be under $30.00 US or #15
sterling.
3. Are you interested in texts in Old English? Old Norse?
Middle English?
4. Characterize briefly the purposes for which you need machine-
readable texts (e.g., lexical, syntactical, metrical, stylistic,
language history, dialectology, other?).
5. Do you have software available to you that will interpret
SGML marked up text?
6. On what platform(s) will you use electronic texts?
UNIX
DOS
MAC
OS/2
WINDOWS
OTHER
7. Should SEENET provide software for concordancing, collating,
searching its texts?
8. Have you produced or have in preparation an electronic text?
Would you consider submitting it for publication?
9. What texts would you most like to see available in electronic
form?
We invite comments, criticism, and support from medievalists in
all disciplines. Responses by e-mail may be directed to
[log in to unmask] (or) [log in to unmask]
or by regular post to either
Thorlac Turville-Petre
Department of English
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
England
or
Hoyt N. Duggan
Department of English
The University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903.
