Vetenskapligt eller ändå skapligt? Om utgivare och utgivning av äldre skönlitteratur på webben.
This master?s thesis investigates publishing of Swedish literary classics on the web. The purpose is to find out who is publishing and why, and what practice of publishing is used. The purpose is also to find out what importance the publishers attach to textual quality and proofreading. For these questions the ?Guidelines for editors of scholarly editions? by MLA is used. The result gives a very scattered picture. Some of the publishers have professional experience in literature publishing and most of them are active in the literary field in one way or another. All the publishers give the overall impression of a true interest in literature and literature as the main purpose of publishing. All editions examined had all the standard information of printed books, ISBN excluded and all publishers except one also followed a good practice of web publishing with easy navigation and information concerning purpose and responsibility. The questions based on MLA?s guidelines revealed big differences between the publishers, some of which had all the information recommended for scholarly editions and some of which had nothing at all. Many of these publishers had other material in abundance though, such as pictures, recordings, musical notes and interactive material. The conclusion is that MLA?s guidelines are not best fitted to examine non-scholarly electronic publishing. A fair picture of many of the publishers in this study was given with other questions focusing navigation, design and other material. Finally, the different publishers are placed in three groups: ?The critical editions? with high textual quality and a main purpose of serving the academic world; ?The study editions? with their abundance of material and a main purpose of serving students at different levels and ?The reading editions? with hardly any extra material and with a main purpose of serving readers - of telling a story.