[b-greek] RE: e-Greek & information discounts

From: Trevor & Julie Peterson (06peterson@cua.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 05:43:30 EDT


Clay wrote:

> E-text documents are now part of that
> "everything." They
> are common property, anyone with the $$$ can have them.
>
[snipped]

> It is only a mouse click away for anyone with the means to
> purchase it.

Then is scholarship to be considered an economic issue? It seems to me that
good resources have always been available to anyone with enough money. You
and I may feel that it's a much smaller price to pay for an e-text than for
comparable print media. But for the poor scholar who must scrape and save
just to feed his family, to shell out $40 for a commentary is a much smaller
hit than dropping thousands of dollars on computer hardware and software.
For the one who can't even purchase a commentary but must travel to a
library for whatever resources are needed, nothing is any more accessible
than anything else.

I'm not saying all commentaries are being or should be written with the
least affluent scholar in mind. I just thought it was interesting how the
financial issue seemed to get brushed aside. I guess it comes to asking,
what are we going to say comprises the minimum library for a competent
commentary user? or a competent exegete? I think the issue has come up on
this list before, that a person should normally be expected to check good
lexica before just posting a question about the meaning of a word. And of
course, we can assume here that all the participants at least have regular
access to a computer. But does this discount of information also mean that
we can justifiably assume that a person who does meaningful research is in
possession of a definable set of tools? If so, what would the list look like
these days?

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics


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