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

Library Trends, Spring, 2000 by Roberta Astroff

In addition to negotiating the fundamental technical issues, the literature librarian also has to apply selection criteria that are identical to those used when selecting books. The selector is evaluating the CD-ROMs as literary texts and as literary archives. And since the library often already owns the print version of these works, the CD-ROM also needs to provide additional features--i.e., "value-added" features, beyond simply the reproduction of the text, that will be useful to the study of literature as described earlier.

Criteria from the Perspective of Literature Studies

In order to choose CD-ROMs wisely, the selection librarian has to identify the practical uses the CD-ROM offers in this context. This also helps clarify selection criteria. The first and perhaps most obvious criterion: Librarians should look for authoritative editors, important editions, and good production values. As Murphy (1998) notes, "hypertext makes possible the ... complicated juxtaposition of materials" appropriate for close historicist and textual scholarship (p. 411). But what is possible or imaginable is not always available on a particular CD-ROM. Different editions or facsimiles of manuscripts and later print editions can be displayed side by side on a computer screen but only if the editors of the electronic product included those editions or chose to design such possibilities.

Several online sites and CD-ROMs that provide the works of Shakespeare do not include different folios or editions nor even any discussion about the edition made available (Murphy, 1998, pp. 411-12). In fact, Murphy quotes the opening screen of the MIT online Complete Works of William Shakespeare as telling users not to "worry" about variations in Shakespearean texts. The Voyager Macbeth (1994) addresses issues of variations in critical articles included, but the only text of the play that is provided is a modernized variant.

Murphy (1998) notes though that "the past decade has witnessed an increasingly keen awareness of the importance of variations among early editions of Shakespeare" in print editions, and this awareness is now visible in some electronic publications as well (p. 412). The Chadwyck-Healey Editions and Adaptions of Shakespeare (1997), available on CD-ROM and via Chadwyck-Healey's Literature on Line series, includes a wide selection of the early quartos, the first folio, the major eighteenth-century editions, the apocryphal texts added in 1664, and sequels and adaptations created by other authors (Murphy, 1998, p. 413). No twentieth-century editions, though, are included. Editors often confront copyright issues when they want to include significant contemporary editions and thus only include older versions.

Murphy (1998) compares the Chadwyck-Healey Shakespeare to the Arden Shakespeare CD ROM. He praises this CD-ROM for a remarkable range of original and supporting materials provided, as well as a useful search facility and flexible screen layout. But he notes that the choice of the Arden 2 editions, rather than the Arden 3, has been controversial, in part because a great many of the volumes included in the Arden 2 date back to the 1950s. Murphy notes: