SUMMARY OF QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSES: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE GROUP

Please also look at the complete set of questionnaire responses (viewable by field and by name) . You can also see the original questionnaire, "Working With Materials."

The Language and Literature group received 35 responses to the NINCH questionnaire. While the responses do not provide a complete or statistically valid picture of scholarly practices in our profession, they do represent a variety of points of view and fields of study. There seems to be a bias toward scholarship; issues in teaching are discussed less often. Literature and art seem to predominate over composition and FL teaching/research. We also suspect that a higher percentage of our respondents are technically sophisticated and active in digital projects than is true of the profession in general. Yet the field committee thinks that the answers convey a sense of the diversity of our profession that is adequate to our purposes.

In general, the respondents indicate that they study texts in various contexts and that they want easier access to the materials that allow them to establish those contexts, both for teaching and conducting research. A wide range of materials are used, a one scholar alone uses "literary, philosophical, theological, and scientific texts; paintings, etchings, and engravings; buildings, ornamental gardens, and urban plans." Most respondents do not study original physical documents, but those who do were adamant about the need for preservation of and access to original materials.

Everyone seems to use and value online searching of library catalogues, indices, the MLA bibliography, etc. to identify and locate source materials. But there was general dissatisfaction with the mechanisms for finding materials that are actually published online. As one scholar put it, "what one wants is a better structure for indicating what is available and, ideally, for offering reliable judgments of value. Unfortunately, the Internet so far seems to make things worse rather than better -- more things are available with even fewer ways of determining value." Online textual materials and publications were sometimes regarded suspiciously because they lacked a rigorous editorial and peer review process (though several respondents were equally critical of the peer review process itself); scanning was singled out as an unreliable means of textual reproduction. The majority also expressed a preference for reading the materials they study in hard paper copy, not on screen, both for ease and comfort of reading and because many want to be able to write their own marginalia on the materials.

A number of frustrations were expressed about current practices of publication and dissemination, including the length of time it takes to get an article or book into print, the difficulty or impossibility (mostly due to expense) of including materials like reproductions of artwork in print publications, the number of titles that are allowed to go out of print by commercial publishers, and the commercialization of academic publishing. Copyright law and the availability of inexpensive texts for students was also a common concern. Digital technologies were perceived as offering a number of possible solutions to these problems, for example: "on-demand publishing (the use of special computer equipment that makes it possible to produce and bind a single copy of a book very quickly), on-line publishing, and possibly e-books would reduce production costs significantly enough that presses might be willing to "publish" scholarly books in my field." But concern was also expressed about the need for "an infrastructure to house and preserve the archives for years to come" as more materials are published electronically. Institutional bias and inertia were seen as serious obstacles to the acceptance of scholarly publication in the digital media.

Respondents seemed about evenly split concerning collaborative efforts, but those who valued it desired the chance to converse and view a text simultaneously over long distances. But the "lack of institutional commitment to collaborative work [and] general culture of isolation in scholarly work in humanities" were identified as serious obstacles to collaborative work.

Finally, lack of time was frequently cited, indicating the vicious cycle of technology -- we all spend one to two more hours per day reading e-mail, etc. (However, boosts in productivity seen elsewhere in the economy due to technology may also be occurring in scholarship and teaching.)

Stephen Olsen & Thomas Beebee

Other Field Questionnaire Summaries:

History | Interdisciplinary Studies | Language and Literature | Performing Arts | Visual and Media Studies