Readers

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Communicating Digital Scholarly Editions: a reader's perspective

Elena Pierazzo

King’s College London

Text Encoding Initiative

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Reading, digitally

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people don’t like reading from a screen

This convincement, although universally acknowledged, is nevertheless wrong

People read from screens. A lot. Much more than they read on paper. And they enjoy it. [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ipad-and-kindle-reading-speeds/]

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A growing market

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Not for all…

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The reader

• New actor in the scholarly editing landscape

• Impact is potentially revolutionary• But what do readers read, how, and from

which support?• Who are they?• What do readers want?

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O’Reilly: Print and Digital

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What people reads

• Newspapers and Magazines• Handbooks and learning literature• Academic Articles • Academic monographs• Novels• Poetry• Messages (emails, texts, status updates, t

weets)

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How people read

Magazine Newpapers Handbooks Dictionaries Journals Monographs Novels Poetry Messages0.00

20.00

40.00

60.00

80.00

100.00

120.00

printdigital

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Sources

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/12/digital-newspaper-readerships-national-survey

• http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/one-two-brits-now-reading-digital-magazines-says-survey

• http://observatory.jiscebooks.org/• http://www.scholarlyediting.org/2013/essays/

essay.porter.html• http://jiscpub.blogs.edina.ac.uk/final-report/• http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/

Poetry+motion+Poems+join+ebook+revolution+progress/8409590/story.html

• http://mashable.com/2012/08/01/email-workers-time/

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Length?

• It seems that the length of the text is inversely proportional to the readers' keenness to have it in digital form

• But what about poetry?

Different types of Reading

• Reading for pleasure• Close Reading• Skimming• Scanning

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Reading for pleasure

Reading as an hobby, a form of relaxation, recreation: linear reading, focused on the plot, more than on the language, structure, etc.

Novels, poetry

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Close Reading/Studying

• Is not reading, but careful and purposeful re-reading

• When you want memorise• When you want learn• Close reading = study

– Handbooks– Articles– Scholarly Editions

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Skimming

Reading very quickly to grasp the content as fast as you can (you don’t know the content, you are try to understand it)

– Articles of newspaper– A scholarly monograph (ehm …)– A report

Scanning

Looking for something specific, an information on a given written text (you know the content or you don’t care about it, you are only interested in a specific information). Not necessarily linear

– Dictionary– Encyclopaedia– Scholarly edition

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From which support do they read

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Digital Scholarly Editions

• Some have long text, some short• They provide more than text: tools and

interactivities• They respond to one or more research

questions• Their editors have agendas

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What do you do with (digital) scholarly editions?

• Do you read them?• If so, in which way?• Do you use them?• Both?• Nothing?

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What do readers want?

• Porter 2013: Print editions! (Scholarly Editing)

• Vanhoutte 2010: Paperbacks sold with newspapers

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So, shall we give up?

Case Study: Touchpress [http://www.touchpress.com/]

Small team (25 people), no international marketing, a few good ideas

But not scholars involved.

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Which readers for Digital Scholarly Editions?

• Editors, specialist of the text edited• Other academics, looking for an

authoritative text• Students, because they are told to• General public

We are still a bit short on this

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If you build it, they will come

And what if they do not?

Since when we care? Is this a concern of ours?

Why? Because the funders wants it?

Which is the price to pay to make it accessible?

In some countries, for some funders Public Engagement is a dirty word…

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Digital Scholarly Editions

• Let’s face it: they are not paperbacks sold with newspapers. They responds to scholarly needs

• Scholarship and research don’t need to be accessible to the large public to be legitimate

• We started to do digital editions because the web offered research opportunity

• Moving scholarly edition on the web doesn’t need to demote them

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Digital Scholarly Editions

• But we can take into consideration a more broader readership with simple tricks (ePub for download)

• Scholarship and Public Engagement can share the same space: there is scholarship in doing PE, but perhaps it is not the same scholarship to make editions

• Make digital editions more accessible can be a research project in itself

• But they don’t have to: running after readers at all costs may make us to loose sight of the scholarly purpose of edition

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50 Shades of Mr Darcy?

• It seems unrealistic to transform digital scholarly editions into best sellers

• Democratising culture, outreach is Research in its own right and you cannot improvise it

• The first purpose of the editor must be “Securing the Past” in a scholarly manner

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Let’s get it straight

• Each edition, scholarly or not, chooses its own target audience, and not all possible audiences

• Each edition, scholarly or not, has a purpose, and not all possible purposes

• Each edition represent a partial point of view on a text and not all possible points of view

Say NO to Digital Ur Editions!

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Who is our target?

• The fact that we put editions on the web does not mean they have to appeal everybody

• The target of scholarly editions are, well, scholars

• We can lower the threshold to appeal other categories, such a students and scholars of other disciplines, if this does not compromise the “scholarshipness”

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To Conclude

• If we want to reach the general public, we need to understand who they are and what they like, and do it without compromises

• If we want to pursue a scholarly purpose, let’s do it, without compromises

• If we want to do both, we need longer projects, more money and different type of expertise

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Thank you

Elena Pierazzo

[email protected]