Digital Critical Editions: New Opportunities or Merely a Change of Medium? Lithuanian History case study

Prof. Wojciech Kruszewski (KUL Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski - Catholic University of Lublin) Discussant: Paola Italia (University of Bologna – Digital Scholarly Editing Full Professor) Audience: CHeDE PhD Students, Postdoctoral and Young Researchers; Members of PRIN with DH. Language: English

  • Data: 15 MAGGIO 2024  dalle 15:00 alle 18:00

  • Luogo: Laboratorio 3, via Zamboni 34

  • Tipo: Altri eventi

Digital Critical Editions:

New Opportunities or Merely a Change of Medium?

Lithuanian History case study

 

Summary

The presented projects of critical digital editions demonstrate two distinct approaches to digital text processing: transferring paper editions directly to a digital format and modifying the traditional version to fit the capabilities and specifics of the digital edition. Based on these experiences, we would like to address the following questions:

 

  1. Is digital editing merely a change of medium, or does it require a different approach to editing?
  2. What benefits does proper development of a digital critical edition bring?
  3. What is the potential of correctly publishing Lithuanian History in a digital edition?
  4. What research opportunities lie within digital critical editions?
  5. What challenges face the digital editor?

 

Lithuanian History: Analog Edition Transferred to Digital Medium.

Lithuanian History is an unfinished work by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, a key figure in understanding Polish history in the 19th century. The work has a distinctly polemical character and is directed (one of the possible interpretations of this text) against the Russian imperial ideology. This work is incomplete, but the author revisited it several times over many years, attempting to complete the project. Several notebooks with drafts and subsequent revisions of Lithuanian History have survived to our times. One of the more intriguing editorial challenges is that the longest version of the work is actually composed of two different, temporally distant editions of the work, artificially spliced together. The edition proposed by us is the first attempt to publish Lithuanian History. We will present the problems with establishing the text of the work, writing commentary on it, and technical issues (utilization of EVT for the presentation of the edition).

  • Lithuanian History: author, topic
  • Presentation of editorial documentation
  • Selection of the editorial basis
  • Principles of text editing
  • Issues with commentary on the work
  • Layout of the digital edition (front, body, back)
  • Relationships between comments and the text of the work (methods of digital binding - expectations vs. possibilities)
  • Differences between analog and digital editions