Review by Choice Review
Providing computer hardware and applications for scholars and students in the humanities is vexing at best and emotionally painful at worst. This book provides a perspective that goes beyond word-processing and large text databases and makes thinking and planning for computing in the humanities a bit easier. It is a philosophical work with practical implications; it should have, as the editor observes, an intellectual shelf life longer than most current computer software. The central argument is as follows: To the extent that the humanities explore and create knowledge of the human condition, and to the extent that the computer has become an element in the human environment, this machine is then both the grist and the mill for humanities scholars and students. The several contributors, each an expert in humanistic computing, cover topics from the creation of knowledge-based systems to the use of literary, historical, and archaeological databases for teaching and research. In brief, they provide an intellectual charter and practical advice for humanists who use (or might use) computers. Recommended highly and unreservedly to all scholars, not just those in the humanities. -C. S. Peebles, Indiana University--Bloomington
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
