Contents

Articles

Dearing & IT: Some Reflections

World Wide Web Teaching in a Northern Environment

Enoch in Cyberspace

The BUFVC and Legal Deposit

Oxford Text Archive

SGML on the Web

Metadata for Electronic Texts and Linguistic Corpora

Reviews and News

Review: The Arden Shakespeare CD-ROM

Response to Arden Review

Review: CD-ROM Descartes

Review: The Annotated Bibliography for English Studies

HUMBUL Update

Computers and English Studies: STELLA

Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature

HAN Conference 1997

Literary & Linguistic Computing

Editorial

It is with great sadness that we have to announce the sudden death of Alison Northover on July 23rd. Alison had represented the library community as a member of our Management and Advisory committees since February 1992. She was an enthusiastic supporter of the Centre throughout this period and will be greatly missed.

Whilst the CTI is still waiting for the start of its review, the long-awaited Dearing report has pre-empted that process with several references to CTI, and by explicitly referring to its place in the proposed Institute of Learning and Teaching. What implications this will have for both the immediate future and the long-term status of the CTI is not yet known, but it was rewarding that CTI's future role is clearly perceived as one of central importance within teaching and learning.

It is particularly timely to note the leaning towards encouraging the use of existing digital teaching resources, rather than the development of those which are specific to a particular course or individual. The centrally-funded Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (Phase 3) is currently offering £3.2 million primarily to fund projects which implement learning technologies into teaching. There is an emphasis on case studies, and full evaluation, in contrast to the courseware development which characterised much of Phases 1 and 2. The Humanities were under-represented in the first two phases of the Programme, and it will be interesting to see if this deficit is corrected. CTI Textual Studies is happy to support and advise those within its constituency who may consider applying for funding under the Programme. More information about TLTP is available at http://www.tltp.ac.uk.

The articles and reviews which are published in this newsletter cumulatively build up a picture of some of the 'real-life' uses of IT in teaching. The various tools of the Internet are increasingly pervasive in many of the reports. What is particularly noteworthy is the fact that what seems to work best in the (real or virtual) classroom does not necessarily need to be high-tech or sophisticated. Thoughtful use of the technology, with adequate support, and sufficient incentive to encourage student participation, all play a part in the successful uptake of resources. Jim Davila writes, for example, that he considered an international email discussion list of more benefit to teaching and learn-ing in his course than a closed class list. The online conversation often informed and enriched the 'real-time' seminars whilst the posting of class essay summaries to the list provided valuable structure and content to the online discussion. (SP)

Editorial Postscript Articles, reviews, and reports for the next issue of Computers & Texts should arrive at CTI Textual Studies by 20th February1998. Please submit a printed version and an electronic version. The electronic version should either be on a 3.5" disk or sent by email to ctitext@oucs.ox.ac.uk.