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Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 133. Wednesday, 15 May 1991.
 
Date: 		Mon, 13 May 1991 20:04:51 -0400
From: 		Roy Flannagan <FLANNAGA@OUACCVMB.Bitnet>
Subject:	[Ohio Conference, Library of the Future]
 
Two subjects:
 
(1) Ohio Shakespeare Conference, in Maine
 
Well, *usually* the Ohio Shakespeare Conference is in Ohio.  Several
years ago Ohio University was host to a very nice little conference.
But this year Herb Coursen at Bowdoin took the ball and ran with it,
from Ohio to Franklin & Marshall, where he was last year, to Maine, for
a conference with the theme of Shakespeare and the moving image.  Herb
is the one who has collected, among other videotapes, about twenty
different version of the Gravedigger scene in *Hamlet*.
 
(2) Library of the Future, on CD-ROM
 
As usual with out-of-copyright collections, there are problems
with texts, and this collection does not tell you where it got
its texts from.  It is true that the people who answer the phone
are helpful and informative, even good-natured and friendly, but
the software is rudimentary and not that easy to use, and it can be
made to crash (it did for me, at least).  It is good to have all those
texts in one place to be searched, but translations are not attributed
(at least not the ones I looked at), some selections are excerpts,
and one has no idea where an English text has come from.  I can't
see exactly what audience would benefit from using the disc, since
Galen and Sherlock Holmes do not fit easily in the same bed.  The
disc is a neat idea, but I can't see that it would be much more useful
than a Nintendo game, and it might be neglected as soon as any toy.
The idea is also like a Great Books series or the Harvard Classics, but
were either of those sets really used much, except at St. John's?
Sorry to be cynical, but can anybody set me on a better course?
 
						Roy Flannagan

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