Editions and Archives

Abstract

The relatively low cost of producing scanned pages and searchable transcripts makes it possible to republish periodicals and newspapers from the nineteenth century for the first time. The constraints of print publication — both the expense of publishing in paper and the requirement to produce editions in the form of the codex — prevented the republication of these often lengthy and visually rich serial works. Now, however, it is relatively easy to scan in the pages of periodicals and newspapers and produce a working — if barely edited — digital edition. What we lack are two sets of methodological principles. Firstly, we need to establish how best to edit newspapers and periodicals so that we can represent them in the present and ensure they are available for study in the future (Price, 2009, p. 10). We have a range of well-established methodologies for textual editing, but they are restricted to certain types of work and make tacit assumptions about what aspects of these works should be edited. Newspapers and periodicals, as multi-authored and diverse print genres characterized by miscellaneity and seriality, challenge editorial strategies predicated on establishing an authoritative text that represents a coherent work and can be encoded within the form of the book. Secondly, we have to find ways to represent these works in digital form. Electronic scholarship is still nascent, but there are a range of accepted methodological practices that can guide the production of digital resources.