Bill Ingram wrote:
> contemplates my question on this head, he says, "I get the
> impression that the reply is supposed to be" that we will want
> everything. That certainly wasn't my intent in asking the question;
> such an answer would smack too much of undisciplined adolescence or
> earlier. I have no idea what the reply "is supposed to be"; my
> reason for asking the question was to discover if we individually or
> corporately have any useful notions about what the answer or answers
> might be.
I'm sorry if that was a bit too tongue-in-cheek, I certainly didn't
mean to imply that you were asking the question in a leading way. What
I meant was that I felt that [full transcripts etc] is what everyone
is 'supposed' to want, but this caused an internal conflict because it
would eliminate the part of records research I most enjoy.
> Having (as James Cummings says) "full transcriptions of
> everything with photographic facsimiles, translations, and full
> crossreferencing of every proper name, noun, and subject in some
> form of hypertext index" strikes me as appalling. For one thing, it
> would take away all the very real fun of working in archives. There
> would be nothing left to discover, nothing left to get excited
> about; we would become mere shufflers of universally available
> data. That's not my vision of the future.
I don't think you, or I, have anything to worry about, because, as Anne
Lancashire just mentioned in another message, Manuscripts are legion.
I doubt that even if the above were the case, however, that there would not
be anything left to discover, the possibility of discovery would lessen.
(As the partiality of extant records necessitates) I would be curious
what your vision of the future does entail? Surely, outside of a REED
context, the publication of full and faithful transcriptions of accounts,
etc., is _in principle_ a good thing? Or is it?
> I'd like to second James Cummings's question about documents in
> which no record of dramatic activity is found; I share his sense
> that it would be most useful to have information about those
> documents available, if only to save needless duplication of effort.
I think that projects like REED have allowed, or perhaps enabled,
secondary studies using their material to provide a contextual interpretation
of the data they have edited. However, while someone disagreed with me earlier
(in private email) that part of the effect of REED was to lead the researcher
back to the original document, I would restate this claim. While REED
volumes are useful tools and reference works in themselves, through the
document descriptions and principles of selection they, I believe, encourage
if not necessitate, that a researcher interested in contextual expansion of
the information in a single or group of related entries return to some form
of the original documents.
> As for reconstituting the life of "Joe Bloggs, harper", and
> whether it should be broadened to "Joe Bloggs, person", I think the
> only way to know is to try. Whether the whole life of Bloggs is
> seen as important depends upon the approach James Cummings brings to
> his reconstitution.
I agree that the assembling of biographical details is, in itself,
a useful exercise. (And quite an exercise at times!) Except with the most
famous of people, however, data is quite limited. Prosopographical studies
of most performers is, sadly, impossible. Is it important, for example, to
know that Joe Bloggs' father was, say, a baker? On the face of it, it might
not tell us anything except for the social class that he came from. If
we then find that his father was an important person in town, for example
one of the couple people the town sent to parliament that year, does this
somehow make the former piece of information more relevant? If so, how
does it and more importantly why?
More naive questions,
James Cummings
--
<A href="http:[log in to unmask]">
James Cummings, [log in to unmask], English, University of Leeds</A>.
