Editorial procedures: sourcing texts
Once we had identified the most interesting critical editions, the next stage was to approach the academic publishers in question with a view to obtaining agreement on the inclusion of their editions in EE. Early in the Project's life this was a challenge, as we did not have an existing site which we could use to demonstrate the potential of EE so as to persuade publishers to collaborate with us. As the Project has developed, however, momentum has grown, and more and more publishers (and editors) are realising the value of the cross-searchability and context that EE provides for individual editions. Moreover, publishers enter into non-exclusive agreements with the Project, meaning that they are free to publish the same data online either themselves or in partnership with another e-publishing initiative.
Where they have been available, actual physical copies of the editions have been kindly provided by the publishers themselves. Others we have had to source online from second-hand bookshops from as far afield as Japan and the USA. Freelancer researchers have carried out their work through reference to copies of the editions in the Bodleian and other libraries of the University of Oxford.