0.26 Underpinnings of the social edition  (Page 5/32)

As part of the shift from print to electronic publication and archiving, work on digitizing necessary secondary research materials has been handled chiefly, but not exclusively, by academic and commercial publishers. Among others, these include Blackwell ( Synergy ), Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press ( eDuke ), eBook Library ( EBL ), EBSCO ( EBSCOhost ), Gale ( Shakespeare Collection ), Google ( Google Book Search ), Ingenta, JSTOR, netLibrary, Oxford University Press, Project MUSE, ProQuest ( Periodicals Archive Online ), Taylor&Francis, and University of California Press ( Caliber ). Secondary research materials are also being provided in the form of (1) open access databases, such as the Database of Early English Playbooks (Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser), the English Short Title Catalogue (British Library, Bibliographical Society, and the Modern Language Association of America), and the REED Patrons and Performance Web Site (Records of Early English Drama and the University of Toronto); (2) open access scholarly journals, such as those involved in the Public Knowledge Project or others listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals ; and, (3) printed books actively digitized by libraries, independently and in collaboration with organizations such as Google ( Google Book Search ) or the Internet Archive ( Open Access Text Archive ).

Even with this sizeable amount of work on primary and secondary materials accomplished or underway, a compendium of such materials is currently unavailable, and, even if it were, there is no system in place to facilitate navigation and dynamic interaction with these materials by the user (much as one might query a database) and by machine (with the query process automated or semi-automated for the user). There are, undoubtedly, benefits in bringing all of these disparate materials together with an integrated knowledgebase approach. Doing so would facilitate more efficient professional engagement with these materials, offering scholars a more convenient, faster, and deeper handling of research resources. For example, a knowledgebase approach would remove the need to search across multiple databases and listings, facilitate searching across primary and secondary materials simultaneously, and allow deeper, full-text searching of all records, rather than simply relying on indexing information alone—which is often not generated by someone with field-specific knowledge. An integrated knowledgebase—whether the integration were actual (in a single repository) or virtual (via federated searching and/or other means)—would also encourage new insights, allowing researchers new ways to consider relations between texts and materials and their professional, analytical contexts. This is accomplished by facilitating conceptual and thematic searches across all pertinent materials, via the incorporation of advanced computing search and analysis tools that assist in capturing connections between the original objects of contemplation (primary materials) and the professional literature about them (secondary materials).