Collecting Full-Text CD-ROMs in Literature: Theory, Format, and Selection - humanities library purchasing

Library Trends, Spring, 2000 by Roberta Astroff

ABSTRACT

COLLECTING FULL-TEXT CD-ROMs FOR a humanities library requires an examination of literary research and the way literature is taught. Radical changes in both theory and technology expanded the sorts of texts literary scholars study. They also revived and reinvented textual scholarship and editorial reconstructions. This means a CD-ROM is worth purchasing if it provides material about the historical context of the literary work, allows for the comparison of successive editions and facsimiles of earlier editions, includes critical work, and points to connections to other arts. At the same time, standard selection criteria for monographs, such as the authority of the editors and good production values, still apply. CD-ROMs should also provide additional "value-added" capabilities, such as notetaking, printing, and bookmarking abilities, to justify the cost and the decision to add them to an existing print collection. A checklist of both literary and technical criteria for selection is included.

INTRODUCTION

The works of Shakespeare, of little-known writers from the Spanish Caribbean, of Miguel de Cervantes, and many others are now available in electronic formats. Selectors in this area however must ask pointed questions about why they would purchase the CD-ROMs, which are often quite expensive. It is hard to imagine that there is a college or university library that does not already own at least one copy of the complete works of both Shakespeare and Cervantes. In addition, the discipline of literature is of course firmly rooted in print culture, and only a tiny percentage of its researchers are exploring hypertext writing. As McGann (1995) noted, "the literature we inherit (to this date) is and will always be bookish" (p. 1). So why duplicate the holding by purchasing the electronic version? Is it duplication? Which full-text CD-ROMs in literature are worth collecting? Why choose CD-ROM publications instead of Web-based publications?

This article is the first in a series of articles about the integration of literature in electronic formats into library collections and university courses. Future papers will discuss introducing faculty to the new formats, working with teaching faculty to redesign coursework, and the integration of full-text CD-ROMs into subject-specific library instruction. This article will examine how selectors in literature need to take into account how professors teach literature, the type of research they do, and the type of assignments they give students when collecting full-text CD-ROMs for a humanities library. It is within this context, after all, that selectors in literature have to establish selection criteria and develop plans for promoting the use of these new resources.

APPROACHES TO LITERATURE AND ELECTRONIC TEXTS

The wide range of current theories and practices in teaching literature and the conflicts among them have become notorious as the "culture wars." Guerin, Labor, Morgan, Reesman, and Willingham (1999) note that "since the mid-1960s we have witnessed a veritable explosion of critical theories, along with a radical expansion and revision of the literary canon" (p. xii).

The foundations of traditional literary studies have been challenged by this explosion. For example, traditional textual criticism, defined as the identification of the most authentic text, has been confronted by critical approaches that dethroned authorial intention and challenged the concept of "authenticity" (Greetham, 1994, p. 8). Analyses based on biographical and psychological studies of the author have been countered by complex understandings of the social nature of meaning, theories of polysemy, and a rethinking of the active role of the reader.

Nevertheless, the subfields within textual criticism, which include scholarly editing and historical and textual bibliography, provide important histories of the texts scholars study. Similarly, genetic criticism or source research uses related materials such as authors' manuscripts and notebooks to map the development of a text (Guerin et al., 1999, p. 311). These histories detail the seeming contradiction of the mutability of written and printed texts. The history of specific works details omissions, errors, author's changes, and all the modifications that befall a printed work even while historians of communication technology point to how print technology fixed texts (Eisenstein, 1979, pp. 80-88). In this regard, despite a history of relying on authorial intention, psychology, and biography, textual and genetic criticism produce studies that can connect with the work done within cultural studies, at least in terms of the materials used. The divisions between traditional textual criticism and criticism based in cultural studies and deconstruction are being blurred as textual scholars confront the challenges mentioned earlier.

The set of approaches known as cultural studies has profoundly modified literature studies. Cultural studies ignores or erases boundaries between disciplines, texts, genres, and earlier cultural distinctions such as elite and popular cultures. A professor of literature will now look at narrative and representation in novels, films, fashion, science, news, and other forms of discourse. In addition, researchers taking a cultural studies approach focus on the materiality of culture, the means of production of cultural work, and the institutional practices of literature and its disciplines. Guerin et al. (1999) note that the "new historicism" of the 1980s, influenced by the writings of Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Frederic Jameson (p. 240):