Saving Working Notes for Future Use

Abstract

Scholarly annotated editions of historically important texts constitute an important foundation for understanding history and culture. Their preparation requires a sustained investment of highly specialized expertise and generates a rich corpus of research notes that are mostly not included in the eventual published volumes. Ordinarily these research resources are simply discarded. We examine the challenge of preserving working notes so that they could become the basis for future research and describe a shared website editornotes.org. MotivationScholarly, annotated editions of historically important documents ("documentary editions") constitute an important resource for research and education in the humanities. The preparation of documentary editions requires expensive expert preparation over many years and funding is difficult. Extensive files of working notes are carefully compiled, including structured name authority files, itineraries, and chronologies. These editorial research resources are not shared with other scholars and are included in abbreviated form (if at all) in the eventual published volumes when the editorial staff are dispersed and the working notes are usually discarded. As with the data sets of scientific research, preserving these editors' research resources and making them openly available could significantly increase the return on the large investment in documentary editing projects. There is wide interest in developing digital editions and in techniques for attaching annotations to existing texts. Our concern is different and unusual. We are concerned with the working notes themselves.Editorial Practices and the Web [3] is a collaborative effort with three major documentary editing projects with overlapping interests in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth century radical and feminist movements in the United States: The