[Open-access] Hello from the Logic Museum

Thu Jun 5 18:39:31 UTC 2014

Greetings!

I curate the Logic Museum, which you can find here 
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Main_Page .  The mission statement here 
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/The_Logic_Museum:What_is_the_Logic_Museum pretty 
much says what it is about, namely providing source material on medieval 
logic, philosophy and theology in the original language (Latin), 
together with translations into English and (where time allows) 
summaries of what the text means.

Sample: 
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Aristotle/perihermenias#bk17a10, 
(Aristotle's De interpretatione Bekker page 17 column 'a' line 10).

The material is mostly old editions of the primary text, and out of 
copyright translations. However I am working on new material. Here 
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Duns_Scotus/Ordinatio/Ordinatio_I/Prologus/P4Q1 
Peter Simpson's translation of Duns Scotus' master work, the _Ordinatio_.

I would also like to produce an edition from digitised manuscripts such 
as this 
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/File:Worcester_13_32vb_sensu_compositionis.jpg, 
using commons-based production techniques. Unfortunately few manuscripts 
are available online. The image I just linked to is from a copy that I 
own, but I only have the right to my own use. I asked the library if I 
could make the whole ms available online at a lower resolution but they 
declined. Currently, editions are produced by very small teams of 
scholars working with traditional materials and traditional techniques.  
(For example, the method of indicating variants in the reading for 
different manuscripts dates back to the middle of the 19C).

I'm interested in the problem of attracting specialists to work on 'open 
source' and open access projects and would be interested in hearing from 
other members of this group.

For what it's worth, a book of mine will be coming out this September 
published in the 'traditional' way by a university press, with proof 
readers and peer reviewers and so on.  If I ask myself why I did that 
rather than publish the same thing in the Logic Museum in a fully Google 
searchable format and with anchors and links to other medieval texts, I 
have to say that it is more prestigious to have it in book format.  If 
you say you have a website and you published something on it, people say 
'oh right'. If by contrast the very same work has been published in 
printed format by a publishing house, you can sense the waves of 
respect.  I wonder if there is any way around that problem.

Edward Buckner,
London