GENERAL CAUTION

by

Robert Schweik

© 2000-2003

ABOUT E-TEXTS, PICTURES, AND MAPS ON THE INTERNET

 

Because many Web pages and other Internet sources provide e-texts of primary and secondary materials, as well as photographs, maps, and other images related to Hardy, drawn from either print or electronic sources, a general caution about the use of such materials may be made here.

Texts are often made available by links to or downloads from "Project Gutenberg," "Bibliomania," "Poets' Corner," "The Oxford Text Archive," and many other electronic sources. Project Gutenberg e-texts are among those most frequently linked to Hardy-related web sites. The names and e-mail addresses of the volunteer transcribers, preparers, and proofreaders of Project Gutenberg e-texts may be supplied, though in varying degrees of fullness; not always provided are bibliographic identifications of the printed texts upon which the transcriptions are based, and these are often editions not suitable for scholarly citation. Even with an e-text collection like "The Oxford Text Archive", print sources are not always indentified, and texts vary greatly in accuracy and in the formats in which they have been encoded. In short, because information about sources and procedures of preparation of e-texts of Hardy's writings are so often incomplete, if not completely absent, it is reasonable to be cautious about their reliability. For a helpful discussion of criteria for evaluation of e-texts, see "Frequently Asked Questions About E-Texts" and "Electronic Texts: Guidelines for Evaluation" by the the Princeton/Rutgers Center for Electronic Texts in Humanities (http://www.ceth.rutgers.edu/). An even more sophisticated discussion of standards in creating and documenting electronic texts and good practice in such matters as scanning, markup, documentation and provision of metadata may be found at the Oxford Text Archive site http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/documents/creating/. At present, scholars using existing Hardy e-texts available on the WWW or other sources on the Internet will almost always find it necessary to compare any citations they make from such texts against an authoritative print edition.

 

Of concern, too, is that texts or images may be reproduced on the Internet in violation of copyright, or with legal permission but with possible unstated copyright restrictions. For a useful survey of the issues involved, see James Fieser's excellent summary (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/pubdomai.htm). The "Oxford Text Archives" provides information about the copyright status of the texts it offers, but other collections usually supply no such information, or make only some general claim that the texts and images they reproduce are out of copyright--often without identifying what specifically was reproduced. Obviously, before using such materials, it is important to ascertain their copyright status, and, in the case of copyrighted materials, to follow existing copyright and fair use law. For guidance, consult the attached page titled Fair Use Copyright Topics. See, also, Stanford University Libraries' "Copyright and Fair Use" (http://fairuse.stanford.edu) for a helpful review of the implications of current copyright law, and the University of Maryland's copyright page (http://www.oit.umd.edu/web/copyright/) for links to information about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Finally, with respect to the reproduction on the Internet of photographs, maps, and other images related to Hardy's life and work, not only is it important to ascertain their copyright status but, also, to be wary of how they are identified. It is not uncommon to find images on the Web whose captions are simply erroneous: a picture of the Sheldonian Theatre has been identified as the Bodleian Library; a Tolpuddle scene has been linked with Hardy's Talbothays; and even the well-known map of the whole of Hardy's Wessex has been mistakenly labeled "Outer Wessex." But although images are sometimes provided with erroneous captions, a far more common problem is that although there may be a possible connection between a picture and an element in Hardy's writings, the image will be labeled in such a simplistic way--e.g., "Lucetta's House," "Tess's Cottage," or "Henchard's Seed Shop"--as to be potentially misleading. Pictures should be identified by the name of their real subject--e.g., "Barclays Bank, South Street, Dorchester"--accompanied by the date of the picture, the source of the picture, and copyright details. Further indications of the relationship of the subject of a picture to a fictional element in Hardy's writings will be most helpfully accurate if made with appropriate qualifications and supported by quotations and other relevant documentation.

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