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Notes
Letter ("Placing Oscar Wilde") to the Times Literary Supplement, 30 October-5 November 1987, p. 1195.
Report to the Corporation of Brown University, June 19, 1913, p. 8. Another use of the machine, he says, is "furnishing a convenient and relatively inexpensive means of copying for our own files pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers of which we do not possess the originals, and which we are not likely to have an opportunity to buy." In the following year's Report (dated 18 June 1914), Winship returned to the subject (pp. 11-12): "The photostat has been in steady use during the year," he said; and the "principal service upon which the Library is now engaged is an attempt to furnish experimental evidence of the practical usefulness of our photographic copying machine for reproducing colonial newspapers." Although these statements do not suggest that copies can fully substitute for originals, they imply no question about the accuracy of photographic copies.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 35 (1941), 281-288 (quotations from pp. 282-283).
Even though the relation of the work to the artifact is very different: in the case of paintings, watercolors, engravings, and the like, the work and the artifact inhabit the same physical space, since the work uses tangible media; in the case of literature, music, and dance, the texts embodied in artifacts do not constitute the works but only attempts at conveying instructions for recreating the works. (I have elaborated this point in my Rosenbach Lectures, A Rationale of Textual Criticism, forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press.)
The best study of type-facsimiles is Allen T. Hazen, "Type-Facsimiles," Modern Philology, 44 (1946-47), 209-17. For an early criticism of such facsimiles, see Henry Wilson, "Remarks on Facsimile Reproductions," Library Association of the United Kingdom Monthly Notes, 1 (1880), 33-40.
See, for example, Carole Louise Morley, Xerography: An Annotated Bibliography (1970); and Michael R. Gabriel, Micrographics, 1900-1977: A Bibliography (1978). A brief pamphlet, Microform Information: First Sources was published by the Reproduction of Library Materials Section of the American Library Association in 1973 and has since been revised. Most of the literature of this field naturally deals with technical matters. Some historical accounts of the growth of the field (with references to other writings) can be found in Frederic Luther, Microfilm: A History, 1839-1900 (1959); Robert F. Clarke, The Impact of Photocopying on Scholarly Publishing (Rutgers diss., 1963); Xerography and Related Processes, ed. John H. Dessauer and Harold E. Clark (1965); H. R. Verry, Microcopying Methods (1954; rev. Gordon H. Wright, 1967); "Sources for the History of Micropublishing," in Studies in Micropublishing, 1853-1976: Documentary Sources, ed. Allen B. Veaner (1977), pp. 79-150; Jack Rubin, A History of Micrographics in the First Person (1980).
It originally appeared in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 24 (1920), 535-540; a revised edition of the pamphlet form appeared in 1925. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the early comments display an enthusiasm that seems determined to avoid recognizing problems. Richard Garnett, speaking on "Photography in Public Libraries" at the 1884 conference of the Library Association of the United Kingdom, eloquently advanced the view that national libraries had a responsibility to establish photography departments and in the course of his remarks said: "Though, as recently pointed out by Dr. Hessels, the photograph may not be absolutely unerring in the reproduction of minute facsimile, if made with due care it is practically adequate in the vast majority of instances." He then added, as if this statement were too cautious, that "save as a matter of sentiment" it would "be almost indifferent" whether a library had an original or a facsimile (Transactions and Proceedings, 1884, pp. 66-73, 142-144; quotations from pp. 66-67). Even A. W. Pollard suggested in 1893 that photocopies of early books be used for permanent exhibitions in libraries that
Consisting of five articles and the reports of two meetings: George Watson Cole, "The Photostat in Bibliographical and Research Work—A Symposium," pp. 1-16; Chester March Cate, "The Photostat and the Huntington Library," pp. 17-21; Edward D. Tweedell, "The Use of the Cameragraph in the John Crerar Library," pp. 22-23; Lodewyk Bendikson, "Photographic Copying and Reproducing," pp. 24-34; Frederic Ives Carpenter, "The Photographic Reproduction of Rare Books," pp. 35-46; reports of discussion at the Swampscott (June 1921) and Chicago (December 1921) meetings, pp. 47-53.
"Photographic Reproduction of Research Materials," Library Trends, 2 (1953-54), 532-544 (quotation from p. 534).
"'Facsimile' Reprints of Old Books," Library, 4th ser., 6 (1925-26), 305-328 (A. W. Pollard, "Preliminary Survey," pp. 305-313; Gilbert R. Redgrave, "Photographic Facsimiles," pp. 313-317; R. W. Chapman, "Oxford Type-Facsimiles," pp. 317-321; W. W. Greg, "Type-Facsimiles and Others," pp. 321-326; discussion, pp. 327-328).
An article strictly from the economic point of view is Ralph R. Shaw, "Should Scientists Use Microfilm?", Library Quarterly, 14 (1944), 229-233. (Another article with a promising title, but dealing only with the duplication of titles in microfilming projects, is Robert B. Eckles, "Some Problems in Scholarly Uses of Microphoto Publication," American Archivist, 27 [1964], 565-567.)
Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 65 (1961), 97-101; reprinted in Veaner (see note 6 above), pp. 290-294.
Blank leaves, for example, are often skipped, even in published facsimiles. Franklin B. Williams, Jr. (see note 19 below) properly observes, "A facsimile reprint should be bibliographically complete, with notice of blank leaves regardless of their presence in the base copy" (p. 117). David Vander Meulen has shown (Scriblerian, 17 [1985] 178-180) how the omission of some blank pages and an insufficient commentary on physical structure affect the interpretation of the evidence presented in the photographs in Maynard Mack's The Last and Greatest Art: Some Unpublished Poetical Manuscripts of Alexander Pope (1984). (Some reviewers of this work implied that the inclusion of blanks did not serve much purpose: James McLaverty [Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, n.s., 1 (1987), 89] and Howard Weinbrot [Studies in English Literature, 25 (1985), 696] expressed their readiness to exchange the blanks for reproductions of other material, Weinbrot calling the blanks "curious" and describing them as having been "superstitiously reproduced.")
Another problem, often encountered in xerographic copies, is that the copy is not identical in size with the original; some discussion of the reproduction ratios of xerographic machines appears in the Wall Street Journal, 24 September 1984, p. 1, col. 4.
"Photo-Facsimiles of STC Books: A Cautionary Check List," Studies in Bibliography, 21 (1968), 109-130 (quotation from p. 109). At about the same time, Frederick Anderson
Other historical accounts appear in the articles gathered in the Library in 1926 (note 13 above).
The examples in this paragraph are from Williams (note 19 above), p. 117; Vander Meulen, letter to me; Blayney, "An Error in Microfilm," Library, 5th ser., 8 (1953), 126-127; Williams, pp. 111, 114, 114, 117; Sullivan, "Bibliography and Facsimile Editions," PBSA, 72 (1978), 327-329.
The examples in this paragraph are from Bowers, "The Yale Folio Facsimile and Scholarship," Modern Philology, 53 (1955-56), 50-57; Greene, in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, n.s., 3 (for 1977), 283-285; Vander Meulen, letter to me.
"The Scandal of Ulysses," New York Review of Books, 30 June 1988, pp. 32-39. Another example from Joyce material, furnished to me by Kidd, illustrates the point that different facsimiles of the same material may read differently: the first page proof for page 153 of Ulysses is reproduced both in The James Joyce Archive (23: 115) and in Philip Gaskell's From Writer to Reader (1978), pp. 231, 242; in the former, where the photograph has a line around it, the word in the upper right corner appears to be "fivebarred", but in the latter, which shows the uneven edge of the proof, it seems to be "fivebarre".
The examples in this paragraph are from Williams (note 19 above), p. 114; Vander Meulen, letter to me; Sullivan (note 21 above); Williams, p. 117; Silver, Writing the History of American Printing (American Printing History Association Award Lecture, 1977), p. 7; Dodge, "Photographic Copies vs. Original Documents," PBSA, 71 (1977), 223-226.
"The Microfacsimile in American Research Libraries," Libri, 8 (1958), 209-222 (quotation from p. 221).
Quoted by George Watson Cole in his survey of responses to his questionnaire (see note 8 above), p. 10. Surprisingly, Randolph G. Adams seemed to take this sort of point more seriously than it deserves: "The matter of facsimiles vs. originals will always be argued between booklovers and mere scholars" (Three Americanists [1939], p. 26). (He added, however, "All of us use facsimiles, photostats, or even films, when we cannot get the original. . . . But we do not prefer facsimiles, we simply use them when we cannot have ready access to the original" [pp. 26-27].) Gordon N. Ray comments briefly on the problems photocopies can cause in the relations between collectors and scholars on pp. 56-58 of his Clark Library seminar talk, "The Private Collector and the Literary Scholar," published in Louis B. Wright and Gordon N. Ray, The Private Collector and the Support of Scholarship (1969), pp. 25-80.
Is it this widespread understanding of how easily reproductions can be doctored that has led New York Telephone to ask its customers to return the "original payment document, not a reproduced copy" and has caused Time Incorporated to issue checks with a line at the top reading, "The face of this document has a colored background—not a white background"? One film that has given publicity to the legal questions posed by reproductions is The Verdict (1982).
For McDonald, see note 14 above (quotation from p. 351); for Tweedell, see note 8 above (quotation from p. 22).
Of course, if the authenticity of a document is questioned, an expert in the forensic examination of documents may when testifying wish to use photographs (such as enlarged photographs of segments of documents). For a thorough discussion, see Wilson R. Harrison, Suspect Documents (1958; with supp., 1966). Ways of recognizing some well-known reproductions (including some produced with intent to deceive) are detailed in Leonard Rapport, "Fakes and Facsimiles: Problems of Identification," American Archivist, 42 (1979), 13-58.
One manifestation of the general failure to differentiate photocopies from originals was described by the songwriter Sammy Cahn during an interview regarding the copyright
In descriptive bibliography an argument has often been made (since Henry Stevens's Photo-Bibliography in 1878) in favor of substituting photographs of title pages for quasifacsimile transcriptions. Among other problems raised by this argument is the fact that a photograph records a single copy, whereas a bibliographical description (unless it is in a catalogue of a collection) aims at describing a whole edition. See my essays on "The Concept of Ideal Copy," SB, 33 (1980), 18-53, and "Title-Page Transcription and Signature Collation Reconsidered," SB, 38 (1985), 45-81.
"The Problem of the Variant Forme in a Facsimile Edition," Library, 5th ser., 7 (1952), 262-272 (quotation from p. 263). Bowers's view is that uncorrected formes should normally be reproduced, because corrected formes are likely to have more compositorial spelling and punctuation, as well as errors in substantives made in the process of correcting other errors.
I have made some comments on the production and significance of facsimile editions in "Textual Scholarship," in Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, ed. Joseph Gibaldi (1981), pp. 29-52 (esp. pp. 34-37).
The Center for Editions of American Authors in 1972 prepared a "Guide for Vetting Facsimile," which included these points: "the editor of the facsimile will be required to make a final collation of the sheets of the facsimile against the manuscript to determine if anything has been lost in the printing process. It is the vettor's responsibility to satisfy himself . . . that anything (i.e., colors of paper and writing) that has been lost in the reproduction process is noted in the apparatus" (CEAA Newsletter, No. 5 [December 1972], pp. 9-10).
If the reproduction is to be published, any page containing such spots should be rephotographed to see whether a more faithful reproduction of the original can be obtained.
Some hint of the sophistication of present technology can be found in "Facsimile Publishers," Abbey Newsletter, 11 (1987), 81.
As Kevin S. Kiernan says at the end of the preface to "Beowulf" and the "Beowulf" Manuscript (1981), "paleographical and codicological facts must ultimately be evaluated, as they can only have been gathered, by direct and prolonged access to the MS, not to the FSS, no matter how faithful or reliable they may seem" (p. xiii). He is able to present a considerable amount of new evidence because, remarkably, "the Beowulf MS has scarcely been studied at all. . . . most editors of the poem have relied on photographic FSS of the MS, and, often enough, modern transcriptions of the FSS, rather than on the MS itself" (p. 3).
Two pages earlier this statement occurs: "Perfection is the term used by some editors to describe checking editorial transcriptions made from photocopied source texts against the originals for each text." The passage does not go on to say that such checking is imperative.
Perhaps the strongest statement about originals in the book has a similar failing: "The age and condition of the manuscripts that bear the auhor's script may make even a rough transcription of their contents difficult. In such cases, the editor must verify his transcriptions against the originals before even beginning his assessment of the importance of each detail of inscription. And he may have to refer to those originals again and again during the period in which he labors to establish their texts for his edition" (p. 90). The phrase "In such cases" suggests that reference to originals is not a basic routine but an exceptional practice for unusual situations.
A plan similar to this has actually been proposed. Winston Broadfoot, in "How Inflation Affects Institutional Collecting," Manuscripts, 31 (1979), 293-296, claims that academic libraries "are not in the business of preserving artifacts," their function being "to supply the scholar with reliable data for his research." "Until the recent technology in photo-duplication," he goes on, "the scholar had to see original documents. This is no
This newsletter, like the earlier ones, also emphasizes conservation and does not recognize the contradiction at the heart of the argument. Three years later, in his twelfth newsletter (1 April 1986), Turner reiterated the same muddle. On the one hand, "The biggest issue facing the rare books world today is the need for an overwhelming involvement and investment in conservation." On the other, the HRC "will not purchase materials which have been copied in any form, and requires certification to the effect that they have not been copied; or, if copies have been made, a certification is required that all such copies are being surrendered with the originals."
The HRC has achieved some notoriety for being difficult in the matter of giving permission to publish the texts of materials in its collections. Most libraries do not control the literary rights to such texts; in some instances authors or their heirs have relinquished their literary rights to the libraries holding their papers, but generally libraries control only the access to the physical items in their collections, not the decisions regarding publication or republication of texts. Turner, however, says that the HRC acquires, along with "the physical property," the "full academic rights to its use." Such rights are, he says, "interpreted as unlimited use by accredited scholars and students for papers, dissertations, teaching, and publication in learned journals, up to and including publication of books by a University press" (HRC Notes, No. 9). Whether or not this "unlimited use" includes publishing texts in their entirety is not clear, and further doubt is cast on the matter by the way the point is stated in a later newsletter: "Full academic rights are defined as the right of all students, faculty, and scholars to examine, make notes, prepare papers, write dissertations, and publish their conclusions in learned journals or through a university press" (No. 12). Given the frame of mind reflected in Turner's newsletters, one is not surprised (only further saddened) to note that an act passed by the Texas legislature in 1987 contains this provision: "Rare books, original manuscripts, personal papers, unpublished letters, and audio and video tapes held by an institution of higher education for the purposes of historical research are confidential, and the institution may restrict access by the public to those materials to protect the actual or potential value of the materials and the privacy of the donors" (70th Legislature, Chapter 408, H.B. 2136, amending the Education Code, Section 51.910). Respecting "the privacy of donors" is unobjectionable: donors have the right to require that certain material be closed for a time. And if protecting "the actual or potential value of the materials" means protecting them from destruction or mutilation ("value" referring to historical and scholarly value), there can again be no objection. But if, as unfortunately seems more likely, "value" refers to monetary value, the idea that a state or one of its institutions would classify materials (including published books) as "confidential" on the assumption that their market value was thereby being maintained is deplorable: such a practice would be antithetical to the aims of any institution truly devoted to the encouragement of scholarship.
Discussions of "intrinsic value" in the preservation literature take the position that some materials have it and some do not. I have not seen any discussion of preservation acknowledging that every artifact has intrinsic value. See, for example, "Intrinsic Value in Archival Material" (National Archives and Records Service Staff Information Paper No. 21, 1982), reprinted in part in Abbey Newsletter, 6 (1982), 66-67; and R. Gay Walker, "The Book as Object," in Research Libraries Group Preservation Manual (2nd ed., 1986), reprinted in Abbey Newsletter, 11 (1987), 4. Another aspect of preservation is the attempt to
Kristi Vaughan, "Crumbling Culture," Yale Alumni Magazine, 50, no. 8 (Summer 1987), 34-38 (quotation from p. 37). Two other approaches are mentioned: (1) "Searches are made to see if the same edition of the book can simply be replaced" (as if all copies of an edition are alike); (2) "Some of the most difficult decisions involve only slight differences among volumes. Is it worth the effort, for instance, to save several translations of the Greek classics?" (as if textual variants make no difference and the history of translation is unimportant).
Barbara L. Mount, "Save the Books," Columbia, 13, no. 3 (December 1987), 14-19 (quotation from p. 17).
Eric Stange, "Millions of Books Are Turning to Dust—Can They Be Saved?", New York Times Book Review, 29 March 1987, pp. 3, 38.
Joanna Biggar, "Our Disappearing Books," Washington Post Magazine, 3 June 1984, pp. 12-15; reprinted in condensed form in Abbey Newsletter, 8 (1984), 84-85. The reader who asked to purchase at least the photographs and maps from the guillotined Workman book was told that government property could not be sold or given to individuals, and these parts of the book were also destroyed.
A report in Abbey Newsletter (12 [1988], 2) of an International Symposium on Newspaper Preservation and Access (London, August 1987) states, "There was concern expressed by a number of participants that U.S. institutions discard very brittle newspapers after filming. The consensus was that one copy of every newspaper published should be preserved in the original, by somebody, somewhere, somehow, and should be accessible; but who will pay for it?" Proposing to save one copy of every number of every newspaper is a move in the right direction, but one copy can scarcely stand for an edition as a whole, which may well have included variant issues.
Roger S. Bagnall and Carolyn L. Harris, "Involving Scholars in Preservation Decisions: The Case of the Classicists," Journal of Academic Librarianship, 13 (1987), 140-146.
The New York Document Conservation Advisory Council has mounted a vigorous campaign to arouse public interest in the state's historical records, both manuscript and printed, and has published an impressive booklet, Our Memory at Risk (1988). But the booklet takes the usual line on intrinsic value: "Institutions should survey their holdings to identify material with intrinsic value" (p. 21). Another recent publication destined to be widely read, the American Library Association's Preservation Microfilming: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists (ed. Nancy E. Gwinn for the Association of Research Libraries, 1987), unfortunately perpetuates the same misconception. Wesley L. Boomgaarden, in the chapter on "Selection of Materials for Microfilming" (pp. 26-60), says, "Even though most items in a research collection are valued primarily for their intellectual content, certain items may possess intrinsic value as artifacts or objects and should be preserved and retained in their original or near-original forms" (p. 55). In her review of this book (Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship, 3, no. 1 [Spring 1988], 59-63), Cathy Henderson usefully points out that Boomgaarden's chapter "reinforces some prevalent biases that should at least be questioned" (pp. 61-62). The first, she says, is "to allow very real economic pressures to cause you to view the decision to retain an item or collection after microfilming as a necessary evil"; and she cautions against an easy acceptance of the "film-and-destroy habit" (p. 62).
Peter Winterble in National Preservation News (the newsletter of the National
In its early booklet (when it was called "Committee on Preservation and Access"), Brittle Books (1986), it made the usual kind of statement: "Many individual volumes of intrinsic value (e.g., those with important marginal notes; those that are exceptional examples of bookmaking) should be safeguarded as artifacts" (p. 8).
The argument that other copies of these books still exist carries no force: the microfilmed copy may differ in various ways from other copies; and the destruction of any copy (no matter how large the edition) carries away with it part of the evidence for generalizing about the edition as a whole.
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