Additional ETD Information
"bonuses" from travel elsewhere in Virginia



UVA has a center for electronic texts (e-texts) which is at the pinnacle, the very state of the art for longevity of archiving, as well as incredibly powerful critical resources for research. SGML is their format, and they use it to make critical digital editions of old manuscripts, letters, and so forth. David Seaman, their director, confirmed my own feeling that SGML was the only valid investment of time for beginning an e-text project.




Myhouse Communications headquarters outside D.C. is where this report was incubated, (myself full of awe and wonder writing lyrically of the events of the past week--before, of course, I had to pare it down a least some economy of expression). The people at Myhouse helped me flesh out my understanding with their questions and inputs, and also referred me to a useful independent resource on e-texts, Mike Wiik. Myhouse is a visionary firm supporting web space for the Maryland 2ndary school system, National Geographic, and others.




I also had several encounters with students currently matriculating or who had matriculated under VT's program.

  1. While I met with Gwen Ewing, the thesis checker, an ESL student came in who had a problem with the graphics in his document. He'd received an e-mail and had fixed the problem and had come in to turn in his graduate survey form. I asked him about eh process, and he did not consider it any harder than what his friends at other schools did on hard copy. He notes: "The software was inexpensive, and once I had the draft done, I can review it myself as many times as I want, and it only takes a few minutes. It also cost a lot less than the hardcopies my friends make."
  2. At a local Cajun restaurant (great aligator they had . . .), to recent MA's very matter-of-factly said that the ETD was easy, and that they liked saving money one the revisions and not making the many hard copies.
  3. At the same Cajun spot (I frequented it), a woman with a recent Ph.D. was about to make her ETD and was excited about the possibility of what electronic linking to online resources in her field (Industrial Psychology) could do for her dissertation. She already had a job and was moving, and liked that ETD's could be so easily done long-distance.