1. Communicating Digital Scholarly
Editions: a reader's perspective
Elena Pierazzo
King’s College London
Text Encoding Initiative 1

2. Reading, digitally
It is a truth universally acknowledged that
people don’t like reading from a screen
This convincement, although universally
acknowledged, is nevertheless wrong
People read from screens. A lot. Much more
than they read on paper. And they enjoy it.
[http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ipad-and-
kindle-reading-speeds/]
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3. A growing market
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4. Not for all…
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5. The reader
• New actor in the scholarly editing
landscape
• Impact is potentially revolutionary
• But what do readers read, how, and from
which support?
• Who are they?
• What do readers want?
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6. O’Reilly: Print and Digital
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7. What people reads
• Newspapers and Magazines
• Handbooks and learning literature
• Academic Articles
• Academic monographs
• Novels
• Poetry
• Messages (emails, texts, status updates,
tweets)
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8. How people read
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0.00
20.00
40.00
60.00
80.00
100.00
120.00
Magazine Newpapers Handbooks Dictionaries Journals Monographs Novels Poetry Messages
print
digital

9. Sources
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/12/
digital-newspaper-readerships-national-survey
• http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/one-two-brits-now-
reading-digital-magazines-says-survey
• http://observatory.jiscebooks.org/
• http://www.scholarlyediting.org/2013/essays/essay.port
er.html
• http://jiscpub.blogs.edina.ac.uk/final-report/
• http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Po
etry+motion+Poems+join+ebook+revolution+progress/
8409590/story.html
• http://mashable.com/2012/08/01/email-workers-time/
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10. Length?
• It seems that the length of the text is
inversely proportional to the readers'
keenness to have it in digital form
• But what about poetry?
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11. Different types of Reading
• Reading for pleasure
• Close Reading
• Skimming
• Scanning
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12. Reading for pleasure
Reading as an hobby, a form of
relaxation, recreation: linear reading, focused
on the plot, more than on the
language, structure, etc.
Novels, poetry
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13. Close Reading/Studying
• Is not reading, but careful and purposeful
re-reading
• When you want memorise
• When you want learn
• Close reading = study
– Handbooks
– Articles
– Scholarly Editions
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14. Skimming
Reading very quickly to grasp the content as
fast as you can (you don’t know the
content, you are try to understand it)
– Articles of newspaper
– A scholarly monograph (ehm …)
– A report

15. Scanning
Looking for something specific, an
information on a given written text (you know
the content or you don’t care about it, you
are only interested in a specific information).
Not necessarily linear
– Dictionary
– Encyclopaedia
– Scholarly edition

16. From which support do they
read
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17. Digital Scholarly Editions
• Some have long text, some short
• They provide more than text: tools and
interactivities
• They respond to one or more research
questions
• Their editors have agendas
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18. What do you do with (digital)
scholarly editions?
• Do you read them?
• If so, in which way?
• Do you use them?
• Both?
• Nothing?
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19. What do readers want?
• Porter 2013: Print
editions!
(Scholarly Editing)
• Vanhoutte 2010:
Paperbacks sold
with newspapers
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20. So, shall we give up?
Case Study: Touchpress
[http://www.touchpress.com/]
Small team (25 people), no international
marketing, a few good ideas
But not scholars involved.
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21. 21

22. Which readers for Digital
Scholarly Editions?
• Editors, specialist of the text edited
• Other academics, looking for an
authoritative text
• Students, because they are told to
• General public
We are still a bit short on this
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23. If you build it, they will come
And what if they do not?
Since when we care? Is this a concern of ours?
Why? Because the funders wants it?
Which is the price to pay to make it accessible?
In some countries, for some funders Public
Engagement is a dirty word…
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24. Digital Scholarly Editions
• Let’s face it: they are not paperbacks sold
with newspapers. They responds to scholarly
needs
• Scholarship and research don’t need to be
accessible to the large public to be legitimate
• We started to do digital editions because the
web offered research opportunity
• Moving scholarly edition on the web doesn’t
need to demote them
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25. Digital Scholarly Editions
• But we can take into consideration a more broader
readership with simple tricks (ePub for download)
• Scholarship and Public Engagement can share the
same space: there is scholarship in doing PE, but
perhaps it is not the same scholarship to make
editions
• Make digital editions more accessible can be a
research project in itself
• But they don’t have to: running after readers at all
costs may make us to loose sight of the scholarly
purpose of edition
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26. 50 Shades of Mr Darcy?
• It seems unrealistic to
transform digital scholarly
editions into best sellers
• Democratising
culture, outreach is Research
in its own right and you cannot
improvise it
• The first purpose of the editor
must be “Securing the Past” in
a scholarly manner
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27. Let’s get it straight
• Each edition, scholarly or not, chooses its own
target audience, and not all possible audiences
• Each edition, scholarly or not, has a
purpose, and not all possible purposes
• Each edition represent a partial point of view on
a text and not all possible points of view
Say NO to Digital Ur Editions!
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28. Who is our target?
• The fact that we put editions on the web
does not mean they have to appeal
everybody
• The target of scholarly editions
are, well, scholars
• We can lower the threshold to appeal
other categories, such a students and
scholars of other disciplines, if this does
not compromise the “scholarshipness”
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29. To Conclude
• If we want to reach the general public, we
need to understand who they are and what
they like, and do it without compromises
• If we want to pursue a scholarly
purpose, let’s do it, without compromises
• If we want to do both, we need longer
projects, more money and different type of
expertise
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30. Thank you
Elena Pierazzo
elena.pierazzo@kcl.ac.uk
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