Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Authenticating Electronic Editions, Phillip Berrie, Paul Eggert, Chris Tiffin, Graham Barwell

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

A book is generally seen as a trustworthy carrier of text because, once printed, text cannot be changed without leaving obvious physical evidence. This stability is accompanied by a corresponding inflexibility. Apart from handwritten marginal annotation, there is little augmentation or manipulation available to the user of a printed text. Electronic texts are far more malleable. They can be modified with great ease and speed. This modification may be careful and deliberate (e.g., editing, adding markup for a new scholarly purpose), it may be whimsical or mendacious (e.g., forgery), or it may be accidental (e.g., mistakes made while editing, or …