Interedition

Interedition (an interoperable supranational infrastructure for digital editions) is an European concerted research action. The action is made up of a group of researchers looking for international scholarly cooperation and communication that facilitates the exchange of literary research and information technology. The web site states that their “aim is to promote the interoperability of the tools and methodology we use in the field of digital scholarly editing and research.” The group holds meetings to encourage the discussion of computer tools created by individual researchers in the hopes of building a networked infrastructure for digital scholarly editing and analysis. One main focus is to become an international body that organizes, creates, and perhaps govern such an initiative.

Interedition’s current primary objective is to create a manual or roadmap for developing an infrastructure specifically for literary materials. Researchers from thirteen countries are listed as participating (as of 2008): Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and the United Kingdom. One of the goals of the group is to expand the involvement to other European countries.

A Memorandum of Understanding, available as a PDF, outlines the group’s intention as a four-year process of research and construction of a roadmap for implementing an infrastructure. In the first year, members would inventory of related projects on a European and global level. Year two, disseminate results of that inventory to members at conferences. The most recent meeting was held on May 6, 2009 at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. In the minutes from that recent meeting, members of one of the working groups acknowledged that they had not fully accomplished the goals of year one and must continue to inventory relevant projects.

This initiative is interesting in light of our discussion and reading. So far, most of the information available on the project consists of their intentions and organizational goals. The group is putting a lot of effort into coordinating interactions of a large number of individuals representing many countries and so far there not an indication of what the ultimate deliverable will look like.