Edition, Project, Database, Archive, Thematic Research Collection: What's in a Name?

Authors

Kenneth M. Price, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

Summer 2009

Comments

Published in DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly Summer 2009, Volume 3 Number 3
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Online at: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000053.html#

Abstract

What are the implications of the terms we use to describe large-scale text-based electronic scholarship, especially undertakings that share some of the ambitions and methods of the traditional multi-volume scholarly edition? And how do the conceptions inherent in these choices of language frame and perhaps limit what we attempt? How do terms such as edition, project, database, archive, and thematic research collection relate to the past, present, and future of textual studies? Kenneth M. Price considers how current terms describing digital scholarship both clarify and obscure our collective enterprise. Price argues that the terms we use have more than expressive importance. The shorthand we invoke when explaining our work to others shapes how we conceive of and also how we position digital scholarship.