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Date: | Fri, 12 May 1995 10:29:25 -0400 |
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This has been an interesting thread. I want to clarify my point: I
think some mass-produced, unfiltered conversion of _all_ gray lit reports to
CD-ROM (or some other acceptable electronic format) would be counterproductive
; I think individual research facilities producing some sort of multi-media
compendiums of their project results is a pretty sharp idea and hopefully
will become standard practice in the next couple of decades. Such electronic
reports/data bases/whatever could including everything from raw field notes
to video to photographs to profile drawings to artifact lists to final
interpretations. I heard Dominic Powlesland (sp?) give a very persuasive
workshop last October in Williamsburg focusing on how such a thing could be
and should be done using a GIS framework. His quite _visionary_ (i.e.
optimistic but impractical at this time) point of view was that you could
hand someone a CD of your project records and they could re-excavate the site
themselves in a way, coming to their own conclusions or at least better able
to follow and critique your conclusions. Of course in demonstrating his
attempts at putting together such a product he crashed his system several
times...
I think it is going to be a while before this gets practical and the
technology settles down enough for semi-computer-literate folks like me to
decide which way to jump. I wonder if late medieval scholars faced similar
dilemmas in the first few decades after Gutenberg's first printing press. I
remain convinced that our own minds and professional networks (like HISTARCH)
are the best media and distribution systems for getting the word out on
projects which have produced useful results.
But it's too nice a day to ponder WORM and FTP's, I'm going out and p
ull back a little black plastic.
Larry
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