I'm delighted to have Sally-Beth's contribution to this
discussion. By describing the growth and maturing of REED's
guidelines since the appearance of the earliest volumes, she makes
clear that the theoretical bases of those guidelines are under
constant review, which is all one could reasonably ask. I repeat my
earlier statement that I have no quarrel with REED's editorial
policy. And I can well imagine that, if all issues of economics
were removed from their discussions, the REED board might well
emerge with much the same set of guidelines as it has now. After
all, the point of publishing records is to get them published.
Her proposal for carrying on our conversation in a round-table
discussion at a conference sounds lovely. We will of course all
need funding from our patrons to support our coming together in this
fashion. But the round-table idea is a good one whether our patrons
think so or not; and I would hope there are equivalent places in our
scholarly work where we can make the same kind of statement.
As an example of what can happen when economic constraints are
removed from the process of publication, one has only to look at the
proliferation of material on the world wide web. Anyone can put
material on the web; much of what's there is self-indulgent trash;
some of what's there (e.g. the REED home page) is very useful; given
the web's potential, probably any one of us would itch to get our
hands on the whole apparatus and exercise some editorial principles.
But this gets me back to the question I asked last week: what
principles would we exercise? Since we can put anything we want on
the web, what might we want to put there? James Cummings suspects
that some of us would want to put up absolutely everything; Anne
Lancashire reminds us that life is too short and that selectivity is
essential; and Sally-Beth says you shouldn't (perhaps even you
can't) remove the researcher's own interests from the equation. So
maybe that's what it boils down to; the issues we as individual
researchers want to pursue -- and have the time and resources to
pursue -- are the issues that get dealt with, and are the issues
that ultimately comprise the material of the discipline. Whether
the details of Joe Bloggs's personal life form part of that material
depends upon whether someone wants them to. Is it that simple?
_______________________________________________________________________
William Ingram, English Dept, Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045
e-mail: [log in to unmask] fax (departmental): 313 763 3128
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