University of Virginia Library

II

These examples show a few of the ways in which erroneous and misleading reproductions occur. Clearly it is difficult to imagine a situation so far-fetched that it cannot be seriously considered as the cause for one or another problematic photocopy. Accidents do happen, and reproductions do mislead. Everyone knows that; and everyone knows (though many people act as if they do not know) that every form of reproduction can lie, by providing a range of possibilities for interpretation that is different from the one offered by the original. What is less well understood is that even if the production of copies were always accurately handled and even if the reproductions themselves were never distorted or misleading in their representation of the originals, they would still be unsatisfactory. The reciting of examples is actually irrelevant, because even if no one had ever found any problem in any previous reproduction, there would still be no reason to trust reproductions or to let them serve as substitutes for originals. The essential fact one must come back to is that every reproduction is a new document, with characteristics of

its own, and no artifact can be a substitute for another artifact. This point is more widely recognized in some fields than in others; as far as verbal compositions are concerned, many people think that the words can easily be transferred from one physical surface to another with no loss, because they do not understand the role of physical evidence in interpreting what communications in fact consist of. Any reproduction, whether clear or indistinct, must be suspect simply because it is not the ultimate source: documentary texts, like all other artifacts, must be examined first-hand if one is serious about approaching them as historical evidence.

Even those persons who have shown themselves in print to be critical of photocopies have generally not alluded to this underlying reason for the inadequacy of all reproductions; instead they have often suggested that copies could indeed replace originals if only the technology of copying could be improved so as to eliminate its present defects (though how the possibility of error can ever be eradicated is hard to see). Frank Weitenkampf, for example, discussing facsimiles of all kinds, says that despite the advent of photographic processes "there is still some need for caution in accepting results, particularly those of the earlier years of these processes."[25] The last nine words suggest that the growth of technology can make reproductions respectable. Weitenkampf's next sentence reinforces the point: "Even some of the later ones may not quite come up to the mark"—in other words, a mark does exist (even if it has not been reached) at which copies can be substitutes for originals. At the end he asserts, "We cannot carry on certain studies with copies that are not 'exact'" (p. 130). He places "exact" in quotation marks, recognizing that no copy reproduces every feature of the original, and yet he seems to believe that copies can reach a level of exactness adequate for "certain studies"—those studies apparently being the more demanding ones, whereas less exact copies are seemingly satisfactory for other studies.

The same misunderstanding of the nature of documentary evidence is shown by another class of critics of reproductions: those who complain that reproductions, particularly microfilms and microfiche, are difficult to use. Indeed, most people who raise objections to photocopies are thinking not of the accuracy of the reproduction but of their own discomfort in sitting in front of a microfilm or microfiche reader. The triviality of this point of view would make it scarcely worth noting if it were not for the prominence of many of the people who have expressed such sentiments in recent years. Their comments suggest that there is nothing wrong with microfacsimiles except the awkwardness of using them; but that is enough (since research should presumably be comfortable)

to provide grounds for protest. The shallowness of this general line is well represented by a 1958 statement of Lawrence S. Thompson's: There is no hint here of the serious reasons for preferring original books to photocopies or of why bibliophily is important. An almost equally superficial view of the relation between book collecting and photocopying had much earlier been expressed by Willard Austen, librarian at Cornell: Such a comment trivializes both historical research and book collecting, showing no recognition of how the "substance" of a verbal artifact is connected to its physical form. Unfortunately the problems inherent in this statement would not be noticed even today by many people.

Over the years discussions of photocopying have intermittently addressed the question of the admissability of photocopies in courts of law, and in the process they have exhibited yet again a failure to focus on basic issues. In 1921 both John Clement Fitzpatrick (of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division) and John S. Greene (of the Photostat Corporation) stated that photostats are accepted as evidence in court, whereas photographs are not, because (in Fitzpatrick's words) "nothing intervenes between the original and the photostat print, which is not the case with a photograph, which has the developed plate between the original and the finished reproduction" and therefore (in Greene's words) "it is an easy matter to rearrange a photograph."[28] Greene was so rash as to say that "the photostat print cannot be changed," but there are now millions of users of xerographic copying machines who would understand why that statement is not the whole truth.[29] Jerry McDonald, in the course of his critical discussion of microfilm, says, "The legality of microfilm is pretty well established," although judges can decide in individual cases what is acceptable: "If you encounter one who has had a bad experience with film, he may reject it as primary evidence." All one can say is that any judges who do accept reproductions are lowering the

evidentiary standards of their courts; certainly no reproduction can offer "primary evidence" unless the reproduction itself is the document at issue. Nor does certification help: Edward Tweedell noted in 1921 that the Crerar Library had provided many photocopies in patent cases, "for which certified copies are furnished"—as if certification were what gave them legal standing.[30] But certification only means that the person doing the certifying believes the copy to be faithful; if the original exists, second-hand testimony is unnecessary. That courts sometimes accept photographic and xerographic copies should affect no one's thinking about the appropriateness of reproductions as evidence; the definition of primary evidence ought to be the same in scholarly research and in courts of law, but neither scholars nor judges are immune from lapses in logic. All the comments I have quoted here about the legal uses of photocopies miss the essential point: that photocopies are different documents from the originals. It is ironic that legal procedure, which is founded on a critical approach to evidence and which does not tolerate a confusion of hearsay and primary evidence where human witnesses are concerned, can sometimes fail to recognize the same confusion when the witnesses are documents.[31] That this confusion does occur in court is a measure of how deeply seated is the belief in the transferability of documentary texts from one document to another—a belief that has probably intensified with the increase in the use of copying machines, in spite of the undeniably wide recognition of the alteration of documentary texts that takes place in copying centers everywhere.[32]

Although different methods of reproduction may offer different opportunities for error and for intentional alteration, all are alike in producing new documents that in one degree or another are not identical with the documents supposedly being copied. And whether those documents contain handwritten or printed texts is of course irrelevant. I have therefore made no distinctions here among the various copying processes or between manuscript and printed materials. There is one way, however, in which printed materials do pose a special problem. Nearly all such materials were originally printed in editions of more than a single copy; and, if more than one copy of an edition survives today, anyone wishing to make a reproduction of that edition must decide which copy to use. Copies of an edition (that is, copies printed from the same type-setting) cannot be assumed to be identical to each other for the same reason that reproductions cannot be assumed to be identical to the originals: they are separate physical objects, separate documents. Indeed, as analytical bibliographers have been showing for a century or so, copies of printed editions from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries can be expected to vary as a result of stop-press alterations made

during the course of printing; and copies of later editions often vary because of the excision and substitution of leaves or entire gatherings and because of changes made between press runs. A reproduction of any one copy of a printed item represents only that copy, not the edition as a whole; yet both producers and users of photofacsimiles of printed material often assume that the facsimile can stand for the edition. This problem, to be sure, is not limited to reproductions, for the same people would obviously not realize that in using an original they would need to collate it against other copies.

Whenever one needs to talk about an entire edition—as in a scholarly critical edition, or a descriptive bibliography, or a critical essay—one must be aware of the differences among copies of the edition.[33] If a published facsimile is to be of service to scholarship, it ought to be accompanied by a record of the ways in which the copy photographed varies in text from other copies. When a reproduction of printed material does not include such information, one therefore has further reason for being cautious, in addition to the reasons that apply to all reproductions. It is in fact not necessary for a photofacsimile of printed material to be limited to the pages of a single copy of an edition, unless the aim is to reproduce a particular copy. Fredson Bowers, who has given this question its most thoughtful treatment, believes that "the ideal photographic facsimile—containing the necessary apparatus—should consist of a collection of formes from any number of copies, these formes being chosen first according to the principle of their textual state, and second according to clarity and fidelity of the inking."[34] The most prominent use of this approach thus far is Charlton Hinman's The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare (1968), in which the corrected state of each forme is represented. Hinman's apparatus identifies the copies used, as well as the "substantive and semisubstantive" variant readings of the uncorrected states. Such a reproduction does in a sense represent the edition as a whole because it draws on evidence present in a large number of the surviving copies and rises above the idiosyncrasies of individual copies, with their fortuitous assemblages of sheets. It is a product of scholarship and serves a purpose that no unannotated facsimile of a single copy, and indeed no single copy in the original, could serve. As a collection of photographs, it cannot escape the problems inherent in all reproductions; but, given that limitation, it shows how the difficulties presented by printed editions can be responsibly accommodated in a facsimile.

Reproductions do have their uses, as long as one understands why they must always be approached with caution and why they can never be thought to obviate examination of originals.[35] There is an enormous

difference between the attitude underlying the careful production of facsimile editions, involving thorough proofreading and the writing of notes commenting on potentially misleading spots,[36] and the frame of mind exhibited by persons who order photocopies and proceed to use them as the equivalent of the originals, never making any direct comparisons. Some of the large commercial projects for supplying extensive series of microfilm, microfiche, or xerographic copies are unfortunately much nearer to the latter than the former. If one Los Angeles company, after examining the results of its order for the microfilming of 2,300,000 documents, had to require the refilming of 35,000,[37] one can imagine how often the microfilms that scholars use may be defective, for they are not always subjected even to the kind of inspection (which presumably did not include proofreading) that this company undertook. Every reproduction of a written or printed text, whether prepared by a publisher for public distribution or by an individual for personal use, should be proofread against the original just as carefully as if it were a newly typeset text, and notes should be made describing the original at those places where the reproduction misrepresents it enough to cause a reader possibly to misinterpret the text.[38] Even a reproduction of a manuscript that is to be used, or published, with an accompanying transcription should be supplemented with such notes, which in effect explain how some of the words or punctuation marks in the transcription were arrived at.

Handled in this way, reproductions can serve as a useful stopgap, until one can return to the originals for a final check. They can thus be a true convenience, whereas without these precautions their helpfulness is illusory. There is no way that reproductions—regardless of what technology is developed in the future[39]—can ever be the equal of originals as documentary evidence, for there is no way of getting around the fact that they are one step (at least) removed from those originals. And there is no way that the existence of reproductions, however high their quality, can justify the destruction of originals. No one seems to have trouble understanding why a reproduction of a vase cannot replace the original for any serious study; but many people apparently fail to see that a paper with written or printed words on it is also an artifact, containing an unreproducible assemblage of clues to its own genesis.[40] Originals are clearly necessary for the study of the distribution or publishing of verbal works; but they are also essential for the study of the texts contained in those distributed objects, whether manuscripts or printed books. The words that come to us from the past, transmitted by paper and ink, cannot be assumed to reflect accurately what their authors intended; in order to assess how the words that are present in documents came to be

there, and indeed to try to make sure that we know what words are in fact there, we must avail ourselves of all the evidence that comes with them. The study of the past requires artifacts from the past; reproductions are the products of a different time from that of the originals they attempt to duplicate, and they therefore transport us to a different time.