Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts Part 4

CALALUCA demonstrated a portion of Volume 160, because it had the most anomalies in it. The software was created by Electronic Book Technologies of Providence, RI, and is called Dynatext. The software works only with SGML-coded data.

Viewing a table of contents on the screen, the audience saw how Dynatext treats each element as a book and attempts to simplify movement through a volume. Familiarity with the Patrologia in print (i.e., the text, its source, and the editions) will make the machine-readable versions highly useful. (Software with a Windows application was sought for PLD, CALALUCA said, because this was the main trend for scholarly use.)

CALALUCA also demonstrated how a user can perform a variety of searches and quickly move to any part of a volume; the look-up screen provides some basic, simple word-searching.

CALALUCA argued that one of the major difficulties is not the software.

Rather, in creating a product that will be used by scholars representing a broad spectrum of computer sophistication, user doc.u.mentation proves to be the most important service one can provide.

CALALUCA next ill.u.s.trated a truncated search under mysterium within ten words of virtus and how one would be able to find its contents throughout the entire database. He said that the exciting thing about PLD is that many of the applications in the retrieval software being written for it will exceed the capabilities of the software employed now for the CD-ROM version. The CD-ROM faces genuine limitations, in terms of speed and comprehensiveness, in the creation of a retrieval software to run it.

CALALUCA said he hoped that individual scholars will download the data, if they wish, to their personal computers, and have ready access to important texts on a constant basis, which they will be able to use in their research and from which they might even be able to publish.

(CALALUCA explained that the blue numbers represented Migne's column numbers, which are the standard scholarly references. Pulling up a note, he stated that these texts were heavily edited and the image files would appear simply as a note as well, so that one could quickly access an image.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ FLEISCHHAUER/ERWAY * Several problems with which AM is still wrestling *

Various search and retrieval capabilities * Ill.u.s.tration of automatic stemming and a truncated search * AM's attempt to find ways to connect cataloging to the texts * AM's gravitation towards SGML * Striking a balance between quant.i.ty and quality * How AM furnishes users recourse to images * Conducting a search in a full-text environment * Macintosh and IBM prototypes of AM * Multimedia aspects of AM *

A demonstration of American Memory by its coordinator, Carl FLEISCHHAUER, and Ricky ERWAY, a.s.sociate coordinator, Library of Congress, concluded the morning session. Beginning with a collection of broadsides from the Continental Congress and the Const.i.tutional Convention, the only text collection in a presentable form at the time of the Workshop, FLEISCHHAUER highlighted several of the problems with which AM is still wrestling.

(In its final form, the disk will contain two collections, not only the broadsides but also the full text with ill.u.s.trations of a set of approximately 300 African-American pamphlets from the period 1870 to 1910.)

As FREEMAN had explained earlier, AM has attempted to use a small amount of interpretation to introduce collections. In the present case, the contractor, a company named Quick Source, in Silver Spring, MD., used software called Toolbook and put together a modestly interactive introduction to the collection. Like the two preceding speakers, FLEISCHHAUER argued that the real a.s.set was the underlying collection.

FLEISCHHAUER proceeded to describe various search and retrieval capabilities while ERWAY worked the computer. In this particular package the "go to" pull-down allowed the user in effect to jump out of Toolbook, where the interactive program was located, and enter the third-party software used by AM for this text collection, which is called Personal Librarian. This was the Windows version of Personal Librarian, a software application put together by a company in Rockville, Md.

Since the broadsides came from the Revolutionary War period, a search was conducted using the words British or war, with the default operator reset as or. FLEISCHHAUER demonstrated both automatic stemming (which finds other forms of the same root) and a truncated search. One of Personal Librarian's strongest features, the relevance ranking, was represented by a chart that indicated how often words being sought appeared in doc.u.ments, with the one receiving the most "hits" obtaining the highest score. The "hit list" that is supplied takes the relevance ranking into account, making the first hit, in effect, the one the software has selected as the most relevant example.

While in the text of one of the broadside doc.u.ments, FLEISCHHAUER remarked AM's attempt to find ways to connect cataloging to the texts, which it does in different ways in different manifestations. In the case shown, the cataloging was pasted on: AM took MARC records that were written as on-line records right into one of the Library's mainframe retrieval programs, pulled them out, and handed them off to the contractor, who ma.s.saged them somewhat to display them in the manner shown. One of AM's questions is, Does the cataloguing normally performed in the mainframe work in this context, or had AM ought to think through adjustments?

FLEISCHHAUER made the additional point that, as far as the text goes, AM has gravitated towards SGML (he pointed to the boldface in the upper part of the screen). Although extremely limited in its ability to translate or interpret SGML, Personal Librarian will furnish both bold and italics on screen; a fairly easy thing to do, but it is one of the ways in which SGML is useful.

Striking a balance between quant.i.ty and quality has been a major concern of AM, with accuracy being one of the places where project staff have felt that less than 100-percent accuracy was not unacceptable.

FLEISCHHAUER cited the example of the standard of the rekeying industry, namely 99.95 percent; as one service bureau informed him, to go from 99.95 to 100 percent would double the cost.

FLEISCHHAUER next demonstrated how AM furnishes users recourse to images, and at the same time recalled LESK's pointed question concerning the number of people who would look at those images and the number who would work only with the text. If the implication of LESK's question was sound, FLEISCHHAUER said, it raised the stakes for text accuracy and reduced the value of the strategy for images.

Contending that preservation is always a bugaboo, FLEISCHHAUER demonstrated several images derived from a scan of a preservation microfilm that AM had made. He awarded a grade of C at best, perhaps a C minus or a C plus, for how well it worked out. Indeed, the matter of learning if other people had better ideas about scanning in general, and, in particular, scanning from microfilm, was one of the factors that drove AM to attempt to think through the agenda for the Workshop. Skew, for example, was one of the issues that AM in its ignorance had not reckoned would prove so difficult.

Further, the handling of images of the sort shown, in a desktop computer environment, involved a considerable amount of zooming and scrolling.

Ultimately, AM staff feel that perhaps the paper copy that is printed out might be the most useful one, but they remain uncertain as to how much on-screen reading users will do.

Returning to the text, FLEISCHHAUER asked viewers to imagine a person who might be conducting a search in a full-text environment. With this scenario, he proceeded to ill.u.s.trate other features of Personal Librarian that he considered helpful; for example, it provides the ability to notice words as one reads. Clicking the "include" b.u.t.ton on the bottom of the search window pops the words that have been highlighted into the search. Thus, a user can refine the search as he or she reads, re-executing the search and continuing to find things in the quest for materials. This software not only contains relevance ranking, Boolean operators, and truncation, it also permits one to perform word algebra, so to say, where one puts two or three words in parentheses and links them with one Boolean operator and then a couple of words in another set of parentheses and asks for things within so many words of others.

Until they became acquainted recently with some of the work being done in cla.s.sics, the AM staff had not realized that a large number of the projects that involve electronic texts were being done by people with a profound interest in language and linguistics. Their search strategies and thinking are oriented to those fields, as is shown in particular by the Perseus example. As amateur historians, the AM staff were thinking more of searching for concepts and ideas than for particular words.

Obviously, FLEISCHHAUER conceded, searching for concepts and ideas and searching for words may be two rather closely related things.

While displaying several images, FLEISCHHAUER observed that the Macintosh prototype built by AM contains a greater diversity of formats. Echoing a previous speaker, he said that it was easier to st.i.tch things together in the Macintosh, though it tended to be a little more anemic in search and retrieval. AM, therefore, increasingly has been investigating sophisticated retrieval engines in the IBM format.

FLEISCHHAUER demonstrated several additional examples of the prototype interfaces: One was AM's metaphor for the network future, in which a kind of reading-room graphic suggests how one would be able to go around to different materials. AM contains a large number of photographs in a.n.a.log video form worked up from a videodisc, which enable users to make copies to print or incorporate in digital doc.u.ments. A frame-grabber is built into the system, making it possible to bring an image into a window and digitize or print it out.

FLEISCHHAUER next demonstrated sound recording, which included texts.

Recycled from a previous project, the collection included sixty 78-rpm phonograph records of political speeches that were made during and immediately after World War I. These const.i.tuted approximately three hours of audio, as AM has digitized it, which occupy 150 megabytes on a CD. Thus, they are considerably compressed. From the catalogue card, FLEISCHHAUER proceeded to a transcript of a speech with the audio available and with highlighted text following it as it played.

A photograph has been added and a transcription made.

Considerable value has been added beyond what the Library of Congress normally would do in cataloguing a sound recording, which raises several questions for AM concerning where to draw lines about how much value it can afford to add and at what point, perhaps, this becomes more than AM could reasonably do or reasonably wish to do. FLEISCHHAUER also demonstrated a motion picture. As FREEMAN had reported earlier, the motion picture materials have proved the most popular, not surprisingly. This says more about the medium, he thought, than about AM's presentation of it.

Because AM's goal was to bring together things that could be used by historians or by people who were curious about history, turn-of-the-century footage seemed to represent the most appropriate collections from the Library of Congress in motion pictures. These were the very first films made by Thomas Edison's company and some others at that time. The particular example ill.u.s.trated was a Biograph film, brought in with a frame-grabber into a window. A single videodisc contains about fifty t.i.tles and pieces of film from that period, all of New York City. Taken together, AM believes, they provide an interesting doc.u.mentary resource.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCUSSION * Using the frame-grabber in AM * Volume of material processed and to be processed * Purpose of AM within LC * Cataloguing and the nature of AM's material * SGML coding and the question of quality versus quant.i.ty *

During the question-and-answer period that followed FLEISCHHAUER's presentation, several clarifications were made.

AM is bringing in motion pictures from a videodisc. The frame-grabber devices create a window on a computer screen, which permits users to digitize a single frame of the movie or one of the photographs. It produces a crude, rough-and-ready image that high school students can incorporate into papers, and that has worked very nicely in this way.

Commenting on FLEISCHHAUER's a.s.sertion that AM was looking more at searching ideas than words, MYLONAS argued that without words an idea does not exist. FLEISCHHAUER conceded that he ought to have articulated his point more clearly. MYLONAS stated that they were in fact both talking about the same thing. By searching for words and by forcing people to focus on the word, the Perseus Project felt that they would get them to the idea. The way one reviews results is tailored more to one kind of user than another.

Concerning the total volume of material that has been processed in this way, AM at this point has in retrievable form seven or eight collections, all of them photographic. In the Macintosh environment, for example, there probably are 35,000-40,000 photographs. The sound recordings number sixty items. The broadsides number about 300 items. There are 500 political cartoons in the form of drawings. The motion pictures, as individual items, number sixty to seventy.

AM also has a ma.n.u.script collection, the life history portion of one of the federal project series, which will contain 2,900 individual doc.u.ments, all first-person narratives. AM has in process about 350 African-American pamphlets, or about 12,000 printed pages for the period 1870-1910. Also in the works are some 4,000 panoramic photographs. AM has recycled a fair amount of the work done by LC's Prints and Photographs Division during the Library's optical disk pilot project in the 1980s. For example, a special division of LC has tooled up and thought through all the ramifications of electronic presentation of photographs. Indeed, they are wheeling them out in great barrel loads.

The purpose of AM within the Library, it is hoped, is to catalyze several of the other special collection divisions which have no particular experience with, in some cases, mixed feelings about, an activity such as AM. Moreover, in many cases the divisions may be characterized as not only lacking experience in "electronifying" things but also in automated cataloguing. MARC cataloguing as practiced in the United States is heavily weighted toward the description of monograph and serial materials, but is much thinner when one enters the world of ma.n.u.scripts and things that are held in the Library's music collection and other units. In response to a comment by LESK, that AM's material is very heavily photographic, and is so primarily because individual records have been made for each photograph, FLEISCHHAUER observed that an item-level catalog record exists, for example, for each photograph in the Detroit Publis.h.i.+ng collection of 25,000 pictures. In the case of the Federal Writers Project, for which nearly 3,000 doc.u.ments exist, representing information from twenty-six different states, AM with the a.s.sistance of Karen STUART of the Ma.n.u.script Division will attempt to find some way not only to have a collection-level record but perhaps a MARC record for each state, which will then serve as an umbrella for the 100-200 doc.u.ments that come under it. But that drama remains to be enacted. The AM staff is conservative and clings to cataloguing, though of course visitors tout artificial intelligence and neural networks in a manner that suggests that perhaps one need not have cataloguing or that much of it could be put aside.

The matter of SGML coding, FLEISCHHAUER conceded, returned the discussion to the earlier treated question of quality versus quant.i.ty in the Library of Congress. Of course, text conversion can be done with 100-percent accuracy, but it means that when one's holdings are as vast as LC's only a tiny amount will be exposed, whereas permitting lower levels of accuracy can lead to exposing or sharing larger amounts, but with the quality correspondingly impaired.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ TWOHIG * A contrary experience concerning electronic options * Volume of material in the Was.h.i.+ngton papers and a suggestion of David Packard *

Implications of Packard's suggestion * Transcribing the doc.u.ments for the CD-ROM * Accuracy of transcriptions * The CD-ROM edition of the Founding Fathers doc.u.ments *

Finding encouragement in a comment of MICHELSON's from the morning session--that numerous people in the humanities were choosing electronic options to do their work--Dorothy TWOHIG, editor, The Papers of George Was.h.i.+ngton, opened her ill.u.s.trated talk by noting that her experience with literary scholars and numerous people in editing was contrary to MICHELSON's. TWOHIG emphasized literary scholars' complete ignorance of the technological options available to them or their reluctance or, in some cases, their downright hostility toward these options.

After providing an overview of the five Founding Fathers projects (Jefferson at Princeton, Franklin at Yale, John Adams at the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, and Madison down the hall from her at the University of Virginia), TWOHIG observed that the Was.h.i.+ngton papers, like all of the projects, include both sides of the Was.h.i.+ngton correspondence and deal with some 135,000 doc.u.ments to be published with extensive annotation in eighty to eighty-five volumes, a project that will not be completed until well into the next century. Thus, it was with considerable enthusiasm several years ago that the Was.h.i.+ngton Papers Project (WPP) greeted David Packard's suggestion that the papers of the Founding Fathers could be published easily and inexpensively, and to the great benefit of American scholars.h.i.+p, via CD-ROM.

In pragmatic terms, funding from the Packard Foundation would expedite the transcription of thousands of doc.u.ments waiting to be put on disk in the WPP offices. Further, since the costs of collecting, editing, and converting the Founding Fathers doc.u.ments into letterpress editions were running into the millions of dollars, and the considerable staffs involved in all of these projects were devoting their careers to producing the work, the Packard Foundation's suggestion had a revolutionary aspect: Transcriptions of the entire corpus of the Founding Fathers papers would be available on CD-ROM to public and college libraries, even high schools, at a fraction of the cost-- $100-$150 for the annual license fee--to produce a limited university press run of 1,000 of each volume of the published papers at $45-$150 per printed volume. Given the current budget crunch in educational systems and the corresponding constraints on librarians in smaller inst.i.tutions who wish to add these volumes to their collections, producing the doc.u.ments on CD-ROM would likely open a greatly expanded audience for the papers. TWOHIG stressed, however, that development of the Founding Fathers CD-ROM is still in its infancy. Serious software problems remain to be resolved before the material can be put into readable form.

Funding from the Packard Foundation resulted in a major push to transcribe the 75,000 or so doc.u.ments of the Was.h.i.+ngton papers remaining to be transcribed onto computer disks. Slides ill.u.s.trated several of the problems encountered, for example, the present inability of CD-ROM to indicate the cross-outs (deleted material) in eighteenth century doc.u.ments. TWOHIG next described doc.u.ments from various periods in the eighteenth century that have been transcribed in chronological order and delivered to the Packard offices in California, where they are converted to the CD-ROM, a process that is expected to consume five years to complete (that is, reckoning from David Packard's suggestion made several years ago, until about July 1994). TWOHIG found an encouraging indication of the project's benefits in the ongoing use made by scholars of the search functions of the CD-ROM, particularly in reducing the time spent in manually turning the pages of the Was.h.i.+ngton papers.

TWOHIG next furnished details concerning the accuracy of transcriptions.

For instance, the insertion of thousands of doc.u.ments on the CD-ROM currently does not permit each doc.u.ment to be verified against the original ma.n.u.script several times as in the case of doc.u.ments that appear in the published edition. However, the transcriptions receive a cursory check for obvious typos, the misspellings of proper names, and other errors from the WPP CD-ROM editor. Eventually, all doc.u.ments that appear in the electronic version will be checked by project editors. Although this process has met with opposition from some of the editors on the grounds that imperfect work may leave their offices, the advantages in making this material available as a research tool outweigh fears about the misspelling of proper names and other relatively minor editorial matters.

Completion of all five Founding Fathers projects (i.e., retrievability and searchability of all of the doc.u.ments by proper names, alternate spellings, or varieties of subjects) will provide one of the richest sources of this size for the history of the United States in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Further, publication on CD-ROM will allow editors to include even minutiae, such as laundry lists, not included in the printed volumes.

It seems possible that the extensive annotation provided in the printed volumes eventually will be added to the CD-ROM edition, pending negotiations with the publishers of the papers. At the moment, the Founding Fathers CD-ROM is accessible only on the IBYCUS, a computer developed out of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae project and designed for the use of cla.s.sical scholars. There are perhaps 400 IBYCUS computers in the country, most of which are in university cla.s.sics departments.

Ultimately, it is antic.i.p.ated that the CD-ROM edition of the Founding Fathers doc.u.ments will run on any IBM-compatible or Macintosh computer with a CD-ROM drive. Numerous changes in the software will also occur before the project is completed. (Editor's note: an IBYCUS was unavailable to demonstrate the CD-ROM.)