Matt Kirschenbaum’s question “How do we decide when we’re done?” is a constant nuisance to all writers, not just those engaged in digital projects (qtd. in Price 17). For print (including documents distributed in print and digital, usually academic-database formats), someone out in the world finally says it’s done; no more edits, the article is accepted for publication. In a year, the article may become outdated or someone else out in the world finds an error. Students and scholars fifty years later admire it, belittle it, or refer to it as one of those seminal works that can’t be ignored. When the medium changes from print to solely digital, suddenly there is no more “done.” The once-stable text is updated; its contents can change as quickly as its last-revised date. Does this change prevent the seminal work from becoming seminal? Does the credible secondary source turn into a mere reference guide—a place to begin research instead of end it, as English teachers like to say? Is the digital-only medium considered a database of tertiary materials: dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference guides?
The above questions are all-the-more relevant for the Whitman Archive, which Kenneth M. Price proudly labels a metaphorical database. The value of this label is in its “simultaneously ‘finished’ and ‘unfinished’ qualities,” its “re-configurable quality,” and its likeness to Whitman’s “restless experimentation,” (Price 19, 20). Though Peter Shillingsburg is referring to the digital archive, I can’t help but agree with the “estranging sea of information,” the “information overload” that the “re-configurable” nature of databases conjures up, even if they are only metaphorical (qtd. in Price 24). Price responds that there is nothing inherently alienating about electronic archiving—that “everything depends on the quality of the editorial work” regardless of medium (24). His estimation is correct, of course, but the quality of digital work is not the problem: the connotations of labeling digital work is. The project, the metaphorical database, the electronic archive, the knowledge site, and the arsenal are all loaded terms; the digital thematic research collection is Price’s attempt at a new, unencumbered term, free of the baggage solely-digital work has accumulated. But Price acknowledges that any existing term fails to convey the scholarly work that occurs beyond simple collection and that an entirely new term is needed (28, 40).
The whole issue of born-digital scholarly work is epitomized by the “Selected Criticism” section of the Whitman Archive. There, the editors profess their gratefulness to the articles and books that have granted the archive permission to repost electronically. The editors also “encourage scholars in the future to negotiate with their publishers about retaining electronic rights to their work (or at least electronic rights jointly held by the writer and by the journal or press)” (“Commentary: Selected Criticism”). They add a link to a pre-written addendum that allows for the retention of electronic rights to published works: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author. Yet, their linked bibliography includes only 29 books and 10 articles, while a search on OU Discover returns 1,249 book results and 37,677 article results. As much as the archivists hope to convey the electronic archive as an effective scholarly project that enables research, the Whitman Archive is limited by its digital medium and perceptions of it—perceptions which clearly extend to the very Whitman scholars that should find the Archive an invaluable resource.
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