Scholarly Societies as Data-Publishing and Data-Sustaining Communities:
Building and Sustaining the Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive (SCTA)

Jeffrey C. Witt (Loyola University Maryland)
https://jeffreycwitt.com | jcwitt@loyola.edu
@jeffreycwitt

July 7, 2022, Leeds, UK

Slide Deck: http://jeffreycwitt.com/slides/2022-07-07-scholarly-societies-as-data-publishers-leeds

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

## Outline 1. What do we want to sustain? 2. What do we need in order to achieve these outcomes? 3. Steps toward Long Term Sustainability
# 1. What do we want to sustain?
All **traditional outcomes**... * Printed texts with traditional indices * Screen renderings of texts But also... A **web of movement**... * Movement from granular resources direct to related instances * Movement from macro insights to inspection of underlying granular data
While want to continue to make beautiful books and readable webpages, this is not enough. --- How we make these renderings determines whether these are isolated achievements or the foundational layer for a thousand other achievements. --- Sustainability that only sustains this top "presentational" layer, doesn't offer the kind of sustainability we need.
## Example ### Using pools of granular re-usable data ### to traverse a text at all layers
# 2. What do we need in order to achieve these outcomes? 1. Text Abstraction 1. Text Granularity 1. Text Classification
## 1. Text Abstraction ### Mapping Text Ideas to Text Manifestations to Text Transcriptions to Text Images
## 2. Text Granularity ### Abstract textual ideas need to be catalogued at every level of the text hierarchy
## 3. Text Classification

In Sum

1. The archive we are describing is not just an archive of visible or materially manifested texts.

2. First and foremost, it is an archive of abstract textual ideas that are normally the domain of area specialists.

3. In the current landscape of scholarly publishing, there seems to be a responsibility gap. None of the traditional publishing entities have the incentives or expertise to construct or care for ideas at this level of abstraction and granularity.

4. Yet there is a community that cares immensely about these abstract ideas. It is the scholarly community which is busy writing articles about textual categorizations or textual parallels across witnesses. But at present this kind of information primarily gets “stored” as visualized text in scholarly journal articles, elaborate appendices, or apparati fontium inaccessible to a machine, and thereby un-useable for the outcomes described here.

5. My suggestion is that the community that already cares greatly about these ideas needs to revolutionize the way it represents its knowledge.

# 3. Steps toward Long Term Sustainability ## Shifting responsibility to the Scholarly Society
## Three fold mission of the Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive 1. To develop field standards for data preparation 2. To aggregate data created according to field standards 3. To publish aggregated data for open and creative re-use by the community.
## 1. Incentivizing Labor ## 2. Meeting Operational Costs
## 1. Incentivizing Labor
[http://digitalhumanities.org//dhq/vol/13/4/000438/000438.html](http://digitalhumanities.org//dhq/vol/13/4/000438/000438.html) ![article](https://s3.amazonaws.com/lum-faculty-jcwitt-public/Leeds2022/DHQArticle.png)
## 2. Meeting Operational Costs
# Questions? jcwitt@loyola.edu | @jeffreycwitt --- Learn more: * The Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive (SCTA) Home Page: [https://scta.info](http://scta.info) * SCTA community page: [https://community.scta.info](https://community.scta.info/) * SCTA Why Donate Page: [https://community.scta.info/donate](https://community.scta.info/donate) * Traveling Imprimatur Article (On Decentralized Peer-Review): [http://digitalhumanities.org//dhq/vol/13/4/000438/000438.html](http://digitalhumanities.org//dhq/vol/13/4/000438/000438.html) * Various Posts and Related Articles: [https://jeffreycwitt.com/posts](https://jeffreycwitt.com/posts) * SCTA Reading Room: [https://scta.lombardpress.org](https://scta.lombardpress.org) * Some good "in-progress" demo pages to visit. * Peter Plaoul [http://scta.info/resource/lectio1](https://scta.lombardpress.org/res?resourceid=http://scta.info/resource/lectio1) * Peter Gracilis [http://scta.info/resource/pg-b1q1](https://scta.lombardpress.org/res?resourceid=http://scta.info/resource/pg-b1q1) * Peter Lombard [http://scta.info/resource/pl-l1d1c1](https://scta.lombardpress.org/res?resourceid=http://scta.info/resource/pl-l1d1c1) * Youtube channel with in-progess demos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBDRlxtGlBryslbPqG4Zz3w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBDRlxtGlBryslbPqG4Zz3w)