III
That these considerations have not always been understood by those
to whom we ought to be able to turn for guidance in such matters has been
repeatedly demonstrated in recent years. For example, in A Guide
to
Documentary Editing (1987), written by Mary-Jo Kline for the
Association for Documentary Editing, the principal discussion of the use of
originals consists of the following: "Whenever possible, transcriptions
should be perfected against the originals of their source texts, not merely
against photocopied versions. When this is not feasible, the edition's
introduction should make this omission clear" (p. 178).[41] The second sentence is certainly
true:
readers of an edition should always be informed when a transcription has
not been read against the original. But the first sentence, prescribing a
reading against the original "Whenever possible," fails to convey a sense
of the importance of the procedure, suggesting only that it is desirable,
not that it is essential. A fuller statement on this matter is a conspicuous
lack in a book that places considerable emphasis on the use of
photocopies.[42] Near the beginning we
are told, "Modern scholarly editing was made a practical possibility by
technological advances in one area—photoduplication" (p. 23); and
the
book treats in some detail the collecting and cataloguing of photocopies in
the editorial office. The equivalence of originals and copies is implied by
such statements as this: "The manuscript or a reliable photocopy is to be
preferred over any later scribal copies or transcriptions as the source text"
(p. 82). In the section on "Microform Supplements" (i.e., to letterpress
editions), the choice between film and fiche is addressed (pp. 70-71), but
nothing is said about the proofreading that such facsimile publications
require. There is even the assertion that the "fathers of expanded
transcription," Julian Boyd and Lyman Butterfield, did
not record in letterpress editions certain kinds of details from manuscript
texts because they assumed "that microform editions of their projects'
archives would make facsimiles of these source texts available to a wide
audience" (p. 128). Perhaps they did; but surely some further comment is
called for, in an introductory guide of this sort, explaining not only the
limitations of microfilm but also the contribution made by a full record in
print. The term "source text," rather than "source document," is repeatedly
used, implying that the text is easily extractable from the
artifact that preserved it. In the context of this book, the absence of a
detailed warning about the problems presented by reproductions is
positively misleading.
The treatment of reproductions in this Guide should be
contrasted with that in an earlier comparable guide, the 1967
Statement of Editorial Principles of the Center for Editions
of
American Authors. This Statement insists at the outset that
"if
the editor is using photocopies of manuscripts, he must read his working
copy against the originals to be certain that he has not missed changes or
additions or cancellations that do not show up in photocopy" (p. 2). A few
pages later a more detailed and forceful directive is issued:
If the copy-text is manuscript or author-corrected proofs, the editor
or someone trained in reading the author's hand must prepare typed
working copy, normally from photocopy. . . . But photocopy is unreliable
in that marginal correction or addition may not be included, that light pencil
may not show up clearly, that erasures in the original which are readable
against the light will fail to show in reproduction, and that variations in
color disappear. The basic requirement therefore is that the typescript, fully
corrected against everything recoverable in the photocopy, must be read
against the original manuscript at least twice. There is some advantage in
a second reading at a later date; but the editor may be able to visit the
manuscript only once, and will therefore necessarily perform this double
check during the course of his one visit. If the editor has not made the
double check on his original visit and is dealing with manuscripts that are
widely dispersed, such as letters,
a single editor named by the general editor may travel to perform this
second check for other editors, or a competent local scholar may make it.
The name of the traveling editor or the local scholar should be cited in each
volume where his help has been enlisted. (pp. 5-6)
Both these statements are repeated in the revised edition of 1972 (entitled
Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures), with the
first
one expanded to include a warning against reading "as punctuation in the
photocopies what are actually smudges, specks, or holes in the manuscript"
(p. 1). The Committee on Scholarly Editions, which succeeded the CEAA,
endorses the same procedures and issued a set of "Guiding Questions" for
testing editions, including the question (quoted here from the April 1977
version), "Where copy-text is manuscript, how have the transcriptions or
copies of manuscript been verified against the original?" The CEAA/CSE
requirement of checking transcriptions against originals, which had thus
been in effect for twenty years at the time
A Guide to Documentary
Editing was published, is of course the out-growth of a longer
scholarly tradition. Against this background the statements about
photocopies in the
Guide appear particularly weak and
disappointing, and the
Guide in this respect takes a large step
backward.
Another egregious recent instance of misunderstanding the nature of
reproductions is provided by a policy of the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center of the University of Texas. Decherd Turner, a few months
after he became its director, proclaimed his views in "An HRC Decalogue,"
published in the personal newsletter he had established (HRC
Notes, No. 3, Thanksgiving 1980). The sixth item in his decalogue
reads in full as follows:
Changing technology raises some dramatic questions for HRC. With
the advent of Xerox and other cheap copying techniques, the uniqueness of
the HRC holdings becomes threatened. The purpose of the 9 million literary
manuscripts at HRC has been to gather in one place materials not available
elsewhere as a support to full research. Such research at this time results
in the publication of approximately sixty books per year—with no
way
of fully knowing how many periodical articles. We will not purchase
materials which have already been Xeroxed and/or microfilmed. Why
should we? If copies exist elsewhere, why should we spend the dollars and
the talent to purchase and classify them? These technology-instituted issues
are immensely critical to HRC.
The patent absurdity of this statement is compounded when one reads the
second item of the decalogue:
HRC has the highest stake in the field of conservation of any major
library in the world. The preeminence of our manuscript collections brings
with it the preeminent threat of destruction. Since most of the manuscript
holdings are of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, we are, in this
sense, a self-destruct library. If the conservation issue is not solved at this
time, in sixty years a goodly portion of HRC can be swept up with a broom
and dustpan. Each day's delay in the establishment of a full and operative
conservation laboratory is a day courting the disdain of history.
When one puts these two statements together, the incredible incoherence of
the position becomes apparent. If it would be a waste of money to buy
manuscript materials of which "copies exist elsewhere," then the copies
must be fully the equal of the originals. In that case, why spend money on
the conservation of the original documents already on hand, when
inexpensive photocopies of them could be made? Indeed, why should good
money be spent on originals at all, even virgin documents that have never
been violated by camera or copying machine? Let other libraries, foolish
enough not to object to materials that have been reproduced, buy the
originals; Texas could then for comparatively little money build up a
magnificent collection of photocopies.
[43]
It is difficult to believe that, once Turner's decalogue was in print,
there was not enough forceful opposition to this stand on reproduction to
result in an alteration of the policy. But the stand continued to be
enunciated. In the ninth newsletter, dated 31 March 1984, one section is
entitled "The Copy Machine." After asserting, "Perhaps no development
like the Xerox copy has so identified the distinctions between the needs of
the librarian and those of the private collector," Turner makes his principal
point:
For the private collector, his love of his original letter by James Joyce
is not diminished by the fact that fifty Xerox copies exist, since after all,
the collector has the original. For the librarian, an entirely different
perspective prevails. The existence of the copies, or even publication of the
letter, has fulfilled the librarian's basic motivation—the letter has
been
saved. To spend institutional dollars on manuscript materials which have
been copied and are thus available is dubious wisdom.
Turner here places "the librarian" in the unenviable position of believing
that the existence of a Xerox copy of a document—or a published
text of
it!—drains the original of scholarly value. Yet a few sentences earlier
he
had said, "The object of a librarian's dollar is to gather unique materials
into one place for purposes of research." To insure that they are unique,
one must insist on certification that they have not been copied: "Without
certification, the librarian is in serious jeopardy of spending resources for
materials which are not unique, thus calling into question his judgment."
But if copies are as good as originals, what is the point of assembling
"unique materials" instead of encouraging their multiplication?
[44] And if anyone is ever allowed to
publish
the texts of the "unique materials," was the "librarian's dollar" well spent
after all? Does not this approach to a research collection lead to a situation
in which materials are
gathered to be hidden from view rather than made available for scholarly
dissemination?
[45] Turner's position is
by no means representative of that of other special-collections librarians;
indeed, it is so extreme that it is perhaps not taken seriously by any of
them. Yet the belief from which it springs—that copies can take the
place
of originals— is widespread, and the implications of it are
frightening,
as is the fact that even one director of a major library can hold it.
From the point of view of the number of people involved, the most
significant recent instances of misunderstanding the relation between copies
and originals have occurred in connection with the book-preservation
movement. The immense problems posed by the deterioration of books
printed on acidic paper in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are finally
being addressed seriously by many institutions and individuals, and we must
be grateful for that. But the public statements by the
persons active in this effort nearly always fail to recognize the limitations
of photocopies as documentary evidence. The debates over the usage of the
two terms
conservation and
preservation at least
call
attention to two distinct kinds of activity: operations intended to extend the
life of the original physical book and operations intended to transfer the text
to a new physical object. In the library world the treatment of originals is
increasingly coming to be called
conservation, with
preservation used as the broader term that encompasses the
transfer of texts. One person who has been vocal in making this distinction
is Pamela W. Darling, but in the process she illustrates a common
confusion. "In the museum world," she says, "where every item is unique,
conservation is—quite properly in my view—the
dominant
term since physical care is virtually the only option. Microfilming the
paintings or recording the appearance of woven baskets on an
optical disc and discarding the originals would hardly do!"
[46] The implication is that books are
different: that, in contrast to all other human products, they are not unique
and that, once their texts have been copied, nothing is lost by discarding
them. Verbal works are indeed different from paintings in that they do not
exist on paper in the way paintings exist on canvas, for language is an
abstract medium; but those who believe that verbal works can simply be
copied on film are failing to recognize the contribution physical evidence
makes toward assessing the reliability of a given text as a representation of
a particular verbal work. In addition, of course, every book is a piece of
evidence for the study of publishing history.
[47]
Preservation is much in the news, and librarians have frequently been
interviewed on the subject, very often with unfortunate results. For
example, the Yale Alumni Magazine for Summer 1987
reported
on the preservation program in the Yale libraries in these terms: "The
decisions on what to save and what to reformat aren't made lightly. As an
overall rule, books valued for their information are given a new format.
Books and documents valued as objects are conserved."[48] This distinction is in fact
nonexistent: all
books are potentially valuable for their "information" (their texts), and all
are worth saving as artifacts, as evidences of past human activity directed
to the transmission of texts. What this statement is in practice likely to
mean is that books of high market value will receive expensive conservation
treatment, and other books will be microfilmed or photocopied and then
thrown out. Such a policy is not worthy of a research library. A
few months after this article on Yale, a similar piece about Columbia
appeared in the Columbia alumni magazine, with the same false distinction
between "intrinsic value" and "content": "For the most part, Columbia
conserves only books that have some intrinsic value, such as those with
marginal notes, elaborate bindings, or
excellent illustrations that would not microfilm well. Works valuable only
for their content and for which replacement copies are not available are
usually given a new format, such as microfilm, microfiche, or
photocopy."
[49] Microfilm is several
times referred to in such terms as "the only proven medium" (p. 16) or "a
technology that we know works" (p. 18); what should have been said
instead is that we know it does not work. Librarians admit, according to the
article, that "few scholars like to use microfilm" (p. 18); but the basis of
the complaint is the expected one, that microfilms are not as easy to use as
books, and nothing is said about the status of reproductions as secondary,
not primary, evidence.
To raise these issues is not to object to the microfilming of
endangered books: there is no question that vast quantities of books are
crumbling apart and that having texts on microfilm is better than not having
them at all. But the widespread misunderstanding of documentary evidence
leads to the unnecessary destruction of books in the name of textual
"preservation." An article in the New York Times describes
the
usual procedure:
The New York Public Library's microfilming division is the second
largest in the country after that of the Library of Congress. Dozens of times
a day, books are "guillotined"—the leaves are severed close to the
spine—then microfilmed two pages at a time. Ten full-time camera
operators snap more than two million frames a year. The remains of the
books are tossed into the trash unless a collector claims them, and any
valuable maps or illustrations are, of course, saved and placed in protective
Mylar sleeves. In special cases, the book itself is spared: the pages are shot
unsevered, and the volume is encased in a custom-made box of acid-free
cardboard.
[50]
The "special cases" referred to are by definition uncommon, and the
general rule in preservation-microfilming operations is to discard what is
left of the books after microfilming. An article in the Washington
Post describes the fate of a 1909 book by the American
explorer
Fanny Bullock Workman after a reader at the Library of Congress called
for it and thus brought its condition to the attention of the library staff:
"Once the filming was complete, the physical remains of the book were
taken to the Exchange and Gifts division where they were boxed up with
other library waste paper and shipped to a pulping company in Baltimore
to be turned into pulp."
[51] Although
this article takes more seriously than it should the complaints about the
inconvenience of microfilm, it is unusual in being generally critical of the
aftermath of microfilming and puts the problem concisely when it says,
"Spines are still being split and pages pulped as books disappear
into information."
[52]
The determination of which books to microfilm (or to microfilm
first) and then to destroy is a central issue in preservation-microfilming
circles, and the thinking about it further illustrates the confusion between
documents and "information" (or "statements," or "works"). The mentality
that does not distinguish copies from originals is likely also to treat different
editions of a work as unnecessary duplications of information and is ready
for the next step of believing that some works, having apparently been
superseded by others, need no longer exist. Deciding to microfilm great
quantities of material in a given field during a particular period "saves
time"—according to the article on Columbia quoted just
above—"but
risks wasting resources on books that will never be used" (p. 19). What will
be used, of course, can never be predicted. But this way of thinking has led
to the formation of groups of scholars to select the most important titles in
their fields for microfilming. In 1984 the American Philological Association
began a project to
place on microfiche the texts of the most important classical studies
published between 1850 and 1918, and a 1987 report of this
undertaking
[53] states near the
beginning that we must not "waste our resources on materials that are
unimportant." Commenting on the alternative "vacuum cleaner approach"
("preserving on a wholesale basis everything from a particular range of
dates or place of publication"), the authors recognize the argument that
"there might someday be a use even for materials whose importance is not
evident at present"; but they proceed to say in the next sentence, rather
incoherently, that the major weakness of this approach is "that materials
which may never be needed by scholars take up time and money and thus
displace more important materials that aren't in the chosen group" (p. 141).
If titles must be selected, asking a group of scholars for advice is
appropriate; but the committee should not fool itself by thinking that some
works lack
usefulness, for there is no product of the past that is not useful in studying
the past.
The APA report is noteworthy for showing that even a group of
specialists in an important area, giving protracted thought to the details of
a large microfiche project, can neglect entirely the question of the status of
reproductions as documentary evidence. Although, the authors say, the
"involvement of scholars in preservation decision making has sharpened our
sense of some of the key issues in preservation, both philosophical and
pragmatic" (p. 144), the philosophical considerations do not include this
most basic one. When the authors report that "most preservation programs
concentrate on preserving the contents of brittle materials with little
artifactual value" (p. 140), there is no criticism of the last phrase; and
although the project policy allows for the retention of some books after
filming, it "aims at minimizing the retention of badly damaged books" (p.
145). Rather than saving books for scholars who
dislike fiche, a "deliberate strategy" of the project is to work to overcome
"scholarly resistance" to microforms—with the result that "scholarly
attitudes toward preservation filming will be improved" (p. 142). This goal
seems so important to the authors as to constitute the subject of their final
paragraph:
The reasons for and consequences of preservation microfilming need
to be made clear to scholars. The active involvement of scholars in the
design and execution of preservation projects can help in this slow task of
education and lead to greater acceptance by the colleagues of those
involved, thus making scholars participants rather than obstructions in the
task of developing the scholarly information systems of the next
century.
A different program of education would seem to be needed. Scholars should
not be scolded for being "obstructions" to the discarding of artifacts, but
they should be taught that there is a far more important reason for fighting
that battle than the mere discomfort of having to sit in front of machines to
do their reading. That scholars are in need of this lesson is clear from a
February 1988 "Summary Report on Preservation Initiative among ACLS
Societies," based on responses from constituent societies to a request for
information from the president of the American Council of Learned
Societies. It seems apparent from this report that only two of the responding
societies, the American Antiquarian Society and the Bibliographical Society
of America, called attention to the connections between "physical form and
intellectual content"; and the report treated their concern as applying to a
special category of material rather than to all material.
[54]
An appropriate mechanism for the education of scholars (and other
readers as well) regarding the relation of copies to originals would now
seem to exist, in the Commission on Preservation and Access. This
Commission was established in 1986 by the Council on Library Resources
to confront on the national level the problem of "capturing and making
accessible the content of brittle books" (in the words of its report for the
year ending 30 June 1987). The goal is, "in effect, to form a new national
collection of preserved materials" by coordinating the filming of at least
three million volumes over a twenty-year period. This ambitious effort has
already achieved a great deal of visibility, and its active program of public
education includes a widely distributed film, Slow Fires, that
aims to help form a "cohesive sense of a preservation ethic for the product
of mankind's accumulated learning and experience."[55] The undertaking is a noble one,
but
thus far the Commission has not made an emphatic statement about the
importance of the physical evidence present in every artifact.[56] This project could be nobler still
if it
included in its educational objectives the teaching of this fundamental truth.
The value of the Commission's microfilming program would not be
undercut—quite the reverse—by a frank acknowledgment of
the
limitations of microfilm and a careful explanation of the meaning of
documentary evidence. If the Commission would then put these ideas into
practice and direct that the remains of every microfilmed book be saved for
whatever bibliographical evidence it still offers, the result would be an even
greater contribution to the avowed goal of preserving our intellectual
heritage.
[57] A central repository could
be established for receiving the books, if the libraries that possessed them
before microfilming did not wish to keep them. By these actions the
Commission could be a powerful influence in demonstrating to the general
public and scholars alike that every scrap of artifactual evidence is worth
saving, that all books (not just "rare" books) are important
as objects, even to persons who are not particularly concerned with
publishing history and whose only interest is in understanding the texts in
books. No one has ever before been in such a favorable position as the
Commission on Preservation and Access for publicizing these ideas, and by
doing so it could contribute immeasurably to the cause of historical
scholarship, without adding greatly to the cost of its endeavor as a
whole.
If this moment is not seized, the nightmare vision of microfilming
that William A. Jackson depicted nearly fifty years ago may become a
reality:
To all the classic "Enemies of Books" has now been added this
devouring monster of the microfilm pressure table. By cajolery, threats,
exhortation, and constant vigilance the librarians of today must guard their
treasures against this danger which lurks in the distant corner where, amid
his livid lights and chemical smells, the photographer has his lair. (p.
288)
Jackson might be surprised—but, on second thought, probably would
not
be—by the significance that his phrase "devouring monster" has
taken on
as the years have passed. Microfilming equipment need not be the monster
it sometimes is, and books need not be abandoned after their encounter with
it. But if librarians are to protect those books, they must come to
understand that their treasures are all the books in their charge, not just
those in "treasure rooms." Microfilms and other reproductions can be
helpful to scholarship if their proper use is recognized; but equating them
with originals undermines scholarship by allowing precision to be replaced
with approximation and secondary evidence to be confused with primary.
The texts of many documents that once existed are now lost forever, and
the texts of others are known only in copies. We use whatever there is; but
when there are originals, we must
not let substitutes supplant them as the best evidence we can have for
recovering statements from the past.