Alois Pichler | 30 years of editing Wittgenstein at the WAB: Developments and future perspectives

Alois Pichler: “30 years of editing Wittgenstein at the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen: Developments and future perspectives”, 7 October 2022.

This presentation was a part of the 7th Symposium of the International Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, "70 Years of Editing Wittgenstein. History, Challenges and Possibilities", co-organised by the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project, hosted by the University of Milan, 7–8 October 2022.

Abstract:

Since its beginnings in 1990, the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB) have gone through a series of developments. These include the following:

1. complementing the then existing copies of the Nachlass with high quality colour images (1995-99, 2014-)
2. developing with Mecs-Wit a system for the transcription of the Wittgenstein Nachlass, transcribing the Nachlass according to this system into a “machine-readable version” (1990-99) and preparing from the transcriptions an edition published at Oxford University Press (BEE, 1998-2000)
3. continuously correcting and improving the transcriptions and supplementing WAB’s facsimile of the Nachlass with facsimiles of items still missing in the BEE (2000-)
4. recognizing that WAB’s real treasure is not the BEE but the machine-readable version which not only is the most comprehensive and detailed existing representation of the Wittgenstein Nachlass, but also serves as a basic edition for yet other editions
5. migrating the transcriptions from Mecs-WiT (samples available from http://wab.uib.no/wab_115www.page) to XML-TEI format (2006-09, XML-TEI samples available from https://repo.clarino.uib.no/xmlui/handle/11509/143) and organizing the transcriptions around the single Nachlass Bemerkung as their basic units
6. expanding WAB’s focus from the Nachlass to all parts of the Wittgenstein domain and working towards interlinking them (2019-)
7. entering cooperations with external partners on complementing WAB’s work on making the Nachlass best possible available (e.g. http://wittfind.cis.uni-muenchen.de/, 2011-)
8. complementing access restricted with gratis open access and partly also CC licensed offers (2009-)
9. complementing static editions with dynamic research platforms such as “interactive dynamic presentation” (http://wab.uib.no/transform/wab.php?modus=opsjoner) and “semantic faceted search and browsing” (http://wab.uib.no/sfb/) (2006-)
10. complementing editorial philology services with semantic web and ontology services (2006-, see http://wab.uib.no/wab_philospace.page)

While I will be happy to respond to queries regarding any of the above points in the Q&A session, in my presentation I will focus on developments and perspectives in (9)-(10).

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