0.26 Underpinnings of the social edition  (Page 10/32)

Advances over the past decade have made it clear that electronic scholarly editions can in fact enjoy the best of both worlds, incorporating elements from the “dynamic text” model—namely, dynamic interaction with the text and its related materials—while at the same time reaping the benefits of the fixed hypertextual links characteristically found in “hypertextual editions.” Indeed, scholarly consensus is that the level of dynamic interaction in an electronic edition itself—if facilitated via text analysis in the style of the “dynamic text”—could replace much of the interaction that one typically has with a text and its accompanying materials via explicit hypertextual links in a hypertextual edition.  At present, there is no extant exemplary implementation of this new dynamic edition , an edition that transfers the principles of interaction afforded by a dynamic text to the realm of the full edition, comprising of that text and all of its extra- and para-textual materials—textual apparatus, commentary, and beyond. See the discussion of these issues in Siemens (2005).

2.2.4. prototyping as a research activity

In addition to the aforementioned critical contexts, it is equally important to situate the development of REKn and PReE within a methodological context of prototyping as a research activity. The process of prototyping in the context of our work involves constructing a functional computational model that embodies the results of our research, and, as an object of further study itself, undergoes iterative modification in response to research and testing. A prototype in this context is an interface or visualization that embodies the theoretical foundations our work establishes, so that the theory informing the creation of the prototype can itself be tested by having people use it. For example, see Sinclair and Rockwell (2007); see also the discussion of modeling in this context in McCarty (2004, 2008).

Research prototypes, such as those we set out to develop, are distinct from prototypes designed as part of a production system in that the research prototype focuses chiefly on providing limited but research-pertinent functionality within a larger framework of assumed operation. An example of a prototypical tool that performs an integral function in a larger digital reading environment is the Dynamic Table of Contexts, an experimental interface that draws on interpretive document encoding to combine the conventional table of contents with an interactive index. Readers use the Dynamic Table of Contexts as a tool for browsing the document by selecting an entry from the index and seeing where it is placed in the table of contents. Each item also serves as a link to the appropriate point in the file. See Ruecker (2005); Ruecker et al. (2007); and, Brown, et al. (2007). Production systems, on the other hand, require full functionality and are often derived from multiple prototyping processes.

3. the proof of concept

REKn was originally conceived as part of a wider research project to develop a prototype textual environment for a dynamic edition : an electronic scholarly edition that models disciplinary interaction in the humanities, specifically in the areas of archival representation, critical inquiry, and the communication of results. Centered on a highly encoded electronic text, this environment facilitates interaction with the text, with primary and secondary materials related to it, and with scholars who have a professional engagement with those materials. This ongoing research requires (1) the adaptation of an exemplary, highly-encoded and properly-imaged electronic base text for the edition; (2) the establishment of an extensive knowledgebase to exist in relation to that exemplary base text, composed of primary and secondary materials pertinent to an understanding of the base text and its literary, historical, cultural, and critical contexts; An important distinction between REKn and the earlier RKB project is the scope of the primary and secondary materials contained. While RKB set out to include “old-spelling texts of major authors (Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton, etc.), the Short-Title Catalogue (1475–1640), the Dictionary of National Biography , period dictionaries (Florio, Elyot, Cotgrave, etc.), and the Oxford English Dictionary ” (Richardson&Neuman 1990: 2), REKn is not limited to “major authors” but seeks to include all canonical works (in print and manuscript) and most extra-canonical works (in print) of the period. and (3) the development of a system to facilitate navigation and dynamic interaction with and between materials in the edition and in the knowledgebase, incorporating professional reading and analytical tools; to allow those materials to be updated; and to implement communicative tools to facilitate computer-assisted interaction between users engaging with the materials.