Documentary editing is a branch ofarchival 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 asprimary source material for researchers unable to visit the archives.
The termdocumentary editing is often confused with the editing ofdocumentary 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 ofscholarly 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 bothgenetic editing of a literary work, and the documentary editing of associated primary sources.[2]: 16
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]
Documentary editing projects can be classified by the theme of the documents published.
Common themes included:
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 atrare book auctions, a phenomenon termed "imprimatur value" byKatharine Leab.[2]: 65
Annotation helps readers understand the context of the published documents.
Common annotations include:
Typographic errors may be annotatedsic, or may be silentlyemended without annotation.[12] Older texts may reflect historicorthography, requiring so much annotation that some editors omitsic to avoid distracting readers.[13]Sic may also be omitted when the error ispassim, even in more modern documents. For example, a publication of Irish diplomatic documents chose to not insertsic at eachmisusage of "England" as "Britain", choosing instead to explain the convention in their introduction.[14]
Excessive annotations can cause a documentary publication to be regarded assecondary source, instead of as a compilation ofprimary 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]
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 photographicfacsimiles. 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 aboutdigital obsolescence.[20]
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 allows documentary editors the fidelity of facsimiles, but without the added printing cost.[24] Further, as the archivistDavid Ferriero observed, electronic publication relieveslibrary access services of the burden of reshelving heavy volumes.[25]
The transition to electronic publication began when theUnited 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 asCD-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]
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]
In the most important practical text on documentary editing, by Mary-Jo Kline
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.
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.