Outline of Course, Outcome for Students and Preliminary Reading
Digital Publishing and Book Studies
Course Tutors: Dr Peter Stokes
The course is an intensive study of publishing and the book in digital format. It will involve reflecting upon and analysing digital resources, the issues behind their creation and use, and the range of available technologies from the book scholar's perspective. Each class focuses on different topics and challenges in the representation and study of manuscript and printed books with the aim of presenting suitable publishing models and relevant technologies. Topics include digital resources that are relevant for the study of manuscripts and printed books, issues related to the creation and use of digital resources, connection between images and text, metadata standards and preservation, document analysis and encoding, and scholarly electronic publishing. Case studies will be presented throughout, and students will have the opportunity for 'hands-on' work on computers during the course.
Course Outline
Session
Monday 5 July
1	Introduction and historical background
	Definition, implications, and purposes of digital publishing in relation to book studies: issues of digital presentation, representation, and synthesis of the book as historical and intellectual object.
2	Digital representation
	Digital methods; challenges in the creation and use of digital resources. Historical development of textual editing in the digital environment. Different ways of creating digital surrogates of analogue materials.
Tuesday 6 July
3	Modelling and text analysis
	Attempts to represent and aid the study of manuscripts and printed books by digital means. Principles and methods of modeling; introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI).
4	Analysis and markup
	Further discussion of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI); methods for re-purposing, transformation and analysis by textual markup. Practical exercises in markup and analysis.
5	Marking up images with texts
	Static and dynamic use of images (particularly of manuscripts and early editions). Integration of images and text: facsimile, diplomatic, and genetic editions. Practical exercises in the integration of text and image.
Wednesday 7 July
6	Digital editions
	The evolving nature of the scholarly critical edition, with the benefits and drawbacks thereof in a digital environment. Types of editions; visualization of text.
7	Images and digitisation
	Online facsimile-editions of manuscripts and early or rare printed books. Process of mass-digitisation; 'virtual libraries' of photographed books. Uses and limitations for scholarly purposes, including brief mention of representation and classification of handwriting.
8	Collaborative editing and publication
	Developments in collaborative editing and publication, particularly regarding development of enabling web technologies. Other applications for some of these technologies. How the experience of using/reading a digital resource can be affected by publication formats.
Thursday 8 July
9	Presentation and interface
	Implications of data vs. presentation. Interfaces for types of editions. More on visualization of text. Implications of technologies: WWW, CD/DVD-ROM, e-reader. Brief discussion of usability.
10	Preservation, metadata and migration
	Issues in preserving digital resources; steps during the creation of a digital project to help ensure longevity. Metadata for discovery, searching, and long-term preservation. Migration of digital resources.
11	Intellectual property, citation, and academic publishing
	The changing nature of academic publishing in the digital world; the effects thereof on traditional scholarly publishing. Copyright and intellectual property, licensing alternatives for digital publications. Support for scholarly citation.
Friday 9 July
12	Remediation
	Issues of remediation intended as re-presentation of old media in new media. Case studies of retro-digitisation; diffusion of widely-publicised mass digitisation projects. The nature, motivation, and scholarly implications of these projects.
13	Print/Digital and future perspectives
	Review of issues raised earlier in the course; possible future developments in digital publishing. Emerging technologies and trends; possibilities for the future.
Outcomes for students
1	An appreciation of the range of technologies that are used in creating digital resources relevant to the history of the book.
2	A basis for making informed choices in the evaluation and use of digital resources relevant to the history of the book.
3	An understanding of the issues behind the modelling of a digital resource for the study of books.
4	An understanding of the areas where access, manipulation and analysis of digital resources can benefit research and teaching in book studies.
Recommended Introductory Reading
1	McGann, Jerome. "The Rationale of HyperText." In Electronic text: Investigations in Method and Theory, ed Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 19-46.
2	Burnard, Lou, Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, and John Unsworth, eds. Electronic Textual Editing (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2006). Preprint version available at http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/ETE/Preview/
3	Schreibman, Susan, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth eds. A Companion to Digital Humanities (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). Preprint version available at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/
4	Siemens, Ray, and Susan Schreibman, A Companion to Digital Literary Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). Preprint version available at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/
5	Robinson, Peter and Hans W. Gabler, eds. Making Texts for the Next Century. Special issue of Literary and Linguistic Computing 15.1 (April 2000). See esp. Robinson, Peter "The One Text and the Many Texts". 5-14.