Adding Value to Slavic Electronic Texts: Approaches for Scholars and Librarians

Abstract

Digital texts provide scholars with opportunities for rapid and meaningful analysis that were not available to earlier generations. This applies to scholars in Slavic studies as much as to scholars in other fields. But, for various reasons, many remain less than enamored of the possibilities. In simplifying ways of making e-texts useful, and in demonstrating their analytic value to the busy scholar, librarians can play a pivotal role. Hence, this article seeks to address the following topics: (1) Questions of value: scholarly imperatives and the maintenance of standards; encoding as a way of adding value to texts for analytical purposes; standardized encoding as a way of avoiding idiosyncratic analysis and ensure interoperability and reuse of data; (2) Development issues: attracting scholars to the graduated use of encoded texts; librarians as mediators: helping scholars exploit the benefits of analytical technologies; (3) Implementation issues: selecting appropriate texts for deep encoding; ensuring an appropriate infrastructure; facilitating customized approaches for different disciplines; (4) Programming issues: shaping datasets and interfaces for easy application and use: practical and theoretical issues.