University of Virginia Library

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:

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:

The patent absurdity of this statement is compounded when one reads the second item of the decalogue: 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: 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 "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: 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:

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.