[1] From: Jim Marchand <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> (15)
Subject: e-archives
The problem is not solved by recommending that people think about leaving
their texts to an archive or maybe even a school, although everybody ought
to do that. People get busy and forget to make wills, leave stuff, etc. I
certainly know of the existence of OTA, mention it/them all the time, even
on HUMANIST occasionally; in fact, I have been meaning to send them some
texts ... I know of large depositories of texts which are not made publicly
available; if you go back through the bibliographies of e-texts since the
early days, you always wonder. What happened to Harry Josselson's Russian
materials, for example? Of course, there is a lot of dog-in-the-manger and
I-want-to-get-the-good-out-of-it-before-I-let-it-go out there.
One step might be to make publicly available lists of what one knows
exists, along with any mode of accession. Some are in existence but are not
easily accessible or are expensive to access. Maybe some of those who are
involved in projects to catalogue e-texts could tell us where we are at at
the moment.
Jim Marchand.