Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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One might have presumed that our non-digital colleagues might have looked to digital
publication as a way out of the current difficulties; as a way of build<strong>in</strong>g new <strong>in</strong>stitutional
structures to support <strong>in</strong> the first <strong>in</strong>stance traditional research activities while explor<strong>in</strong>g new
models made possible by digital formats. But rather, the opposite has happened. There has
arisen <strong>in</strong>stead a bunker mentality cl<strong>in</strong>g<strong>in</strong>g to the high old ways as assiduously as the British
clung to the Ra (Edmond and Schreibman 2010).
Despite the many challenges fac<strong>in</strong>g traditional scholarly publish<strong>in</strong>g, Edmond and Schreibman sadly
acknowledged that many scholars still did not see any solutions to the “pr<strong>in</strong>t crisis” through the digital
publication of scholarship.
Borgman also affirmed <strong>in</strong> her article that neither journal nor book publish<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the humanities has
rapidly embraced the digital world for a variety of reasons, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g a distrust of onl<strong>in</strong>e dissem<strong>in</strong>ation
and an unwill<strong>in</strong>gness to try new technologies. This needs to change, Borgman argued, because the
“love affair with pr<strong>in</strong>t” endangers both traditional and digital humanities scholarship. As pr<strong>in</strong>t-only
publication cont<strong>in</strong>ues to decrease, those who rely on it as the sole outlet for their scholarship, Borgman
concluded, will be talk<strong>in</strong>g to an ever-smaller audience. She also proposed that digital publish<strong>in</strong>g
offered a number of advantages over pr<strong>in</strong>t, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the ability to <strong>in</strong>corporate dynamic multimedia or
hypermedia, the possibility of reach<strong>in</strong>g larger audiences, a far shorter time to publication, possibly
heightened levels of citation, and easier access to digital materials. 683
In addition, Borgman stated that one key benefit of digital publish<strong>in</strong>g for the humanities is that it
“offers different ways of express<strong>in</strong>g ideas and present<strong>in</strong>g evidence for those ideas” (Borgman 2009).
The ability of digital scholarship not only to be l<strong>in</strong>ked to the primary source data on which it is based
but also to demonstrate different levels of scholarly certa<strong>in</strong>ty or to highlight the <strong>in</strong>terpretative nature of
humanities scholarship was a factor that many digital classicists lauded as well 684 and was considered
to be an essential component of any humanities <strong>in</strong>frastructure. Indeed, a number of archaeologists
<strong>in</strong>terviewed <strong>in</strong> the CSHE report argued that the major reason they would not consider websites as
scholarly productions for tenure reviews was that few if any websites made a formal argument or
offered an <strong>in</strong>terpretative analysis of the evidence they provided (Harley et. al. 2010). Nonetheless,
develop<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>frastructure that not just supports but reflects the <strong>in</strong>terpretative nature of the data it
conta<strong>in</strong>s is a critical challenge. “The nexus between data gather<strong>in</strong>g (or digitization) and <strong>in</strong>terpretation,”
Stuart Dunn has argued, “is the crucial issue that librarians and technical developers are faced with
when plann<strong>in</strong>g, or otherwise engag<strong>in</strong>g with, the deployment of a VRE <strong>in</strong> archaeology, or <strong>in</strong>deed <strong>in</strong> the
humanities more generally”(Dunn 2009).
A related issue addressed by Borgman is how to resolve several major dis<strong>in</strong>centives she had identified
as likely to prevent traditional humanities scholars from embrac<strong>in</strong>g open data and digital scholarship
(Borgman 2009). Borgman stated that many humanists have various reasons for not wish<strong>in</strong>g to share
their data or the products of their research. These reasons <strong>in</strong>cluded the fact that there is often far more
reward for publish<strong>in</strong>g papers than for releas<strong>in</strong>g data, that the efforts to document one’s data and
sources for others is far more challeng<strong>in</strong>g than do<strong>in</strong>g so just for oneself, that not shar<strong>in</strong>g data and
sources can at times offer a competitive advantage to establish a priority of claims, and that many
scholars view data as their own <strong>in</strong>tellectual property. The CSHE report described a similar “culture of
ownership” among archaeologists, who were often reluctant to share data for fear of be<strong>in</strong>g “scooped.”
683 Gabriel Bodard (2008) offered a similar list of the advantages of digital publish<strong>in</strong>g for classical scholarship that was discussed earlier <strong>in</strong> this paper.
684 Such as with Bodard and Garces (2009) <strong>in</strong> terms of digital editions, with Barker et al. (2010) for visualizations of historical narratives, and with
Beacham and Denard (2003), Flaten (2009), and Koll et al. (2009) for 3-D archaeological models and reconstruction.