Documentary editing

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Documentary editing is a branch of archival science involving the publication of documents selected from historical archives. A documentary editor selects documents from archival sources and then annotates the documents to add context. The documents are then published, serving as primary source material for researchers unable to visit the archives.

Contents

Terminology

The term documentary editing is often confused with the editing of documentary films. Mary-Jo Kline, the author of a key introductory book on the subject, [1] remarked that she once found her treatise in the "movies and film" section of the bookstore. [2] : 3 

Documentary editing grew out of the related field of scholarly editing. Documentary editors support historic scholarship by editing archival primary sources, whereas scholarly editors can support a broader range of disciplines using a wider variety of sources. [2] : 16  Some editing projects overlap both terms, especially those related to literary analysis, which can involve both genetic editing of a literary work, and the documentary editing of associated primary sources. [2] : 16 

History

Documentary editing began out of a desire for historians to provide a foundation for future scholars. [2] : 4  The field grew in the late 1800s, with much of the work motivated by a desire to promote pride in local and national history. [3] : 72  By the 1930s, documentary editing emerged as a specialization of professional archivists. [4]

By the late 1970s, documentary editing began using digital automation, [5] and by the early 2000s, electronic publication was preferred over printed volumes. [6]

Themes of projects

Documentary editing projects can be classified by the theme of the documents published.

Common themes included:

Process

Selection

Documentary editors are forced to be selective when choosing which archival documents to edit and publish. [2] : 47  Although the selection process is key to appraising the evidentiary value of the published documents, later scholars often lack the means to assess the original editor's selection decisions. [10]

Common selection criteria include

Editors must also abide by any terms imposed by the custodian of the records. [2] : 75  If the records are held in private collections, editors may persuade the owners to allow publication by noting that the originals of source documents can fetch higher prices at rare book auctions, a phenomenon termed "imprimatur value" by Katharine Leab. [2] : 65 

Annotation

An annotated document, as published in FRUS. Frus1977-80v09-p235.svg
An annotated document, as published in FRUS.

Annotation helps readers understand the context of the published documents.

Common annotations include:

Typographic errors may be annotated sic , or may be silently emended without annotation. [12] Older texts may reflect historic orthography, requiring so much annotation that some editors omit sic to avoid distracting readers. [13] Sic may also be omitted when the error is passim , even in more modern documents. For example, a publication of Irish diplomatic documents chose to not insert sic at each misusage of "England" as "Britain", choosing instead to explain the convention in their introduction. [14]

Excessive annotations can cause a documentary publication to be regarded as secondary source, instead of as a compilation of primary sources. [15] Editors try to strike a balance between "letting the documents tell the story" and providing sufficient context to readers who may lack the editor's subject matter expertise. [16] [17]

Manner of publication

Documentary editors historically published printed volumes.

Printed volumes may contain transcribed documents, necessitating "a fair amount of hack work" [18] [2] : 115  to copy the text. The texts of documents may be published in full, or be summarized to retain all important content, but to exclude more trivial and incidental matter. An abstracted text of this type is known in British English as a "calendar", [19] although in American English that term is more typically applied to a more basic inventory of documents. [7] : 65–69 

An alternative form of publication is photographic facsimiles. Facsimile editions are traditionally more costly, but allow a closer fidelity to the original documents. [2] : 148 

Printed books, although less convenient than electronic editions, may help increase an editing project's accessibility and alleviate concerns about digital obsolescence. [20]

Microform

Microform publication reduces costs, [21] while allowing editors to avoid rote transcription. [2] : 267  Microform editions typically have minimal, if any annotation. [22]

Microform publication is only suitable for legible documents, and works poorly on handwritten documents. [22] Micoform editions are usually accompanied by a printed index, which many libraries store separately from the microform, potentially frustrating researchers. [22]

Compared with printed editions, microform editions are less selective, [23] and the large number of published documents can make it difficult for readers to find germane content. [22]

Electronic publication

Electronic publication allows documentary editors the fidelity of facsimiles, but without the added printing cost. [24] Further, as the archivist David Ferriero observed, electronic publication relieves library access services of the burden of reshelving heavy volumes. [25]

The transition to electronic publication began when the United States National Archives commissioned a study on digital preservation in 1984. [23] The report, which was delivered in 1991, focused on the potential for publication via digital optical media, such as CD-ROM. [26] The technical standards recommended in the report were used in early electronic documentary editing projects. [23]

As of the early 2010s, TEI format is preferred for electronic publication because of its extensibility and interoperability with other publishing tools. [27]

Academic role

Documentary editing is foundational to modern historic scholarship. [28] Primary sources are, after an editing project, both accessible and understandable to broader audience. [29] A publication can serve to illustrate an historic field, drawing interest to a topic. [30]

Documentary editing also serves pedagogical function. Document based questions, common in secondary school history classes, draw upon edited documents to measure student skills at historic analysis. [31] Editing may also offer undergraduates an opportunity at historic research. [32]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Cox, Richard J. (January 2015). "Lester J. Cappon and the Publishing of Modern Documentary Editions" . Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 46 (3): 224–250. doi:10.3138/jsp.46.3.02. ISSN   1198-9742. In the most important practical text on documentary editing, by Mary-Jo Kline
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Kline, Mary-Jo; Perdue, Susan Holbrook (2008). A guide to documentary editing: prepared for the Association for Documentary Editing (3rd ed.). Charlottesville London: University of Virginia Press. ISBN   978-0-8139-2727-5.
  3. ↑ Millar, Laura (1986). "The Decline of Documentary Publishing: The Role of English-Canadian Archives and Historical Societies in Documentary Publishing". Archivaria (23): 69–85. ISSN   1923-6409.
  4. ↑ Birdsall, William F. (1975). "The Two Sides of the Desk: The Archivist and the Historian, 1909-1935". The American Archivist. 38 (2): 159–173. doi:10.17723/aarc.38.2.b2t13026qp667526. ISSN   0360-9081. JSTOR   40291735.
  5. ↑ Burke, Frank G. (1987). "Automation and Documentary Editing" . The British Journal for the History of Science. 20 (1): 73–80. doi:10.1017/S0007087400000510. ISSN   1474-001X.
  6. ↑ Ohge, Christopher (2021). Publishing scholarly editions: archives, computing, and experience. Cambridge elements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-108-72018-2.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Stevens, Michael E.; Burg, Steven B. (1997). Editing Historical Documents: A Handbook of Practice. American Association for State and Local History Series (1st ed.). California: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated. ISBN   978-0-7591-1753-2.
  8. 1 2 Kent, George (July 1994). "Editing Diplomatic Documents: A Review of Official U. S. and German Document Series" . The American Archivist. 57 (3): 462–481. doi:10.17723/aarc.57.3.6n823xmm2pg07702. ISSN   0360-9081.
  9. ↑ "Freedmen and Southern Society Project - Welcome Page". www.freedmen.umd.edu. Retrieved 2025-10-11.
  10. ↑ Preston, Richard A. (1974). "Review of Documents on Canadian External Affairs. Volume 1, 1909-1918; Volume 2, The Paris Peace Conference of 1919; Volume 3, 1919-1925; Volume 4, 1926-1930; Volume 5, 1931-1935; Volume 6, 1936-1939" . The American Historical Review. 79 (5): 1672. doi:10.2307/1851959. ISSN   0002-8762. JSTOR   1851959.
  11. ↑ Howard, Adam M. (2014). Foreign relations of the United States, 1977-1980, Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978-December 1980. Washington (D.C.): U.S. Government printing office. p. 202. ISBN   978-0-16-092101-8.
  12. ↑ Miyamoto, Melody (2007). "Bringing Method to the Madness: Editing Personal Writings for Public Wonderment". Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011) (29).
  13. ↑ Prince, Carl (December 1984). "Communications" . Journal of American History. 71 (3): 692–693. doi:10.1093/jahist/71.3.692. ISSN   0021-8723.
  14. ↑ Fanning, Ronan; Kennedy, Michael; Keogh, Dermot; O'Halpin, Eunan, eds. (2017). Documents on Irish foreign policy: Volume III, 1926-1932. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. p. xvii. ISBN   978-1-908997-44-9. The authors of the documents reproduced tended to refer to Britain as 'England' or made no distinction between the two geographical entities and the Editors have not thought it necessary to insert (sic) at all relevant points throughout the volume.
  15. ↑ Ward, David C.; Forbush, William B. (1990). "Review of The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Vol. 3, 1811-1820, William B. Forbush III". Winterthur Portfolio. 25 (4): 297–300. doi:10.1086/496506. ISSN   0084-0416. JSTOR   1181290.
  16. ↑ Luey, Beth (2011). "The Best Job in the World: Documentary Editor". Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011).
  17. ↑ Frankel, Robert (2006). "Chronicling the Early Court: A Look Back at Project's End". Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011). Another reason we wrote these fairly extensive headnotes is that readers, frankly, would be lost without them. In a documentary history, the idea is to let the documents tell the story as much as possible. But these cases tend to be difficult – or downright baffling – and there was no way we could simply lay out the documents, even with ample annotation, and assume readers would understand the cases.
  18. ↑ Firth, Edith A. (1963-01-01). "The Editing And Publishing Of Documents". The Canadian Archivist. 1 (1): 4. ISSN   1923-6395.
  19. ↑ Harvey, P. D. A. (2001). Editing Historical Records. London: British Library. pp. 56–59. ISBN   0712346848.
  20. ↑ Ahlberg, Kristin L. (May 2008). "Building a Model Public History Program: The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State" . The Public Historian. 30 (2): 9–28. doi:10.1525/tph.2008.30.2.9. ISSN   0272-3433.
  21. ↑ McAllister, William B.; Botts, Joshua; Cozzens, Peter; Marrs, Aaron W. (2015). Toward "thorough, accurate, and reliable": a history of the Foreign relations of the United States series. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs. p. 179. ISBN   978-0-16-093212-0.
  22. 1 2 3 4 Jeffrey, Thomas (1982). "Microform Editions of Documentary Collections: Where Do We Stand? And Where Do We Go From Here?". Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing.
  23. 1 2 3 Benner, Martha L. (1996). ""The Lincoln Legal Papers" and The New Age of Documentary Editing". Computers and the Humanities. 30 (5): 365–372. ISSN   0010-4817. JSTOR   30204656.
  24. ↑ Pierazzo, Elena (2014). "Digital Documentary Editions and the Others". Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing. 35. ISSN   2116-7257.
  25. ↑ Ruane, Michael E. (2013-06-13). "National Archives puts Founding Fathers' papers online". The Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2025-10-21.
  26. ↑ Hooton, William (March 1991). Optical Digital Image Storage System Project Report (PDF). National Archives and Records Administration.
  27. ↑ Scifleet, Paul; Williams, Susan P. (2011). "Understanding Documentary Practice: Lessons Learnt from the Text Encoding Initiative". In Gradmann, Stefan; Borri, Francesca; Meghini, Carlo; Schuldt, Heiko (eds.). Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6966. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 272–283. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24469-8_29. ISBN   978-3-642-24469-8.
  28. ↑ "Documentary Editing Builds Scholarly Foundations". American Historical Association. Retrieved 2025-10-15.
  29. ↑ Massey, Gregory D. (2005-02-01). "The Papers of Henry Laurens and Modern Historical Documentary Editing" . The Public Historian. 27 (1): 39–60. doi:10.1525/tph.2005.27.1.39. ISSN   0272-3433.
  30. ↑ Millar, Laura (1989). "KLINE, A Guide to Documentary Editing". Archivaria (28): 167–169. ISSN   1923-6409.
  31. ↑ Conrad, Dennis (2005-01-01). "Presidential Address--A Time to Reach Out". Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011). 27 (4).
  32. ↑ Condon, Robin (2007-01-01). "Healing the Liberal Arts: Undergraduate Research and Documentary Editing". Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979-2011). 29.

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