Jennifer Howard, The Uses of Libel, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 8, 2005 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
In that era [17th century England], members of Parliament, courtiers, and even the king himself came in for abuse at the hands of anonymous commentators who expressed their sentiments in pointed, frequently rude poems known as libels....[M]ore than 350 Stuart-era libels [are] now available online in Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry From Manuscript Sources....Early Stuart Libels is the product of 15 years of archival research and transcribing....The scholarly work, which was financed largely by Britain's Arts and Humanities Research Council, represents an effort to make these manuscript sources more widely available. Many have never before been published. There are no plans for a print version, nor will the current edition be subject to augmentation or additions; the editors hope that there will be a "sense of fixity" about it, and that it will be referenced by scholars just as a traditional book would be. In that, it may be on the leading edge of a new, electronic approach to studying and disseminating source material. "This edition seeks in many ways to be a pathbreaking endeavor," the editors note in their introduction. "The electronic medium ... provides a superb opportunity to offer scholarly editions of works otherwise largely inaccessible or unknown to both the academic community and the layperson alike." There is no charge to access Early Stuart Libels, which can be either browsed online or downloaded.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/08/2005 10:58:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
