Historians generally grumble at the liberties taken with letters and papers by editors and biographers in the past, while reviewers may complain at the professorial pomposities which interfere with the reader's interaction with the text. Certainly, reading is not a mere matter of information retrieval or of source-mining, but a meeting of minds, and any over-zealous editing which makes this more difficult will have failed. Editors, whether of journals or of documents, are midwives of ideas—self-effacingly bringing an author's meaning and style into the world. What reviewers praise is the unobtrusive, and what they damn is ‘a manner at once slapdash and intrusive’, making allowances perhaps for an ‘introduction which is as admirable as his footnotes are useless’. When in the 1960s new technology brought us a flood of facsimile reprints of scientific works, some avoided these problems by appearing naked and unashamed: but for a text on phrenology, or for Goethe's Theory of Colours, a fig leaf or two of commentary is really necessary to help the innocent reader to interact with the book. Facsimiles of nineteenth-century editions of Wilkins' papers, of some Newton correspondence, or of Henry More's poetry are even more problematic; the reader should know that these editors' assumptions cannot be taken for granted, and that their introductions are themselves historical documents. The exact reproduction of misprints and misbindings (giving pages out of order and misnumbered) is of dubious assistance to the modern reader.

Letter writing played an especially important role in Charles Darwin's scientific career. Like all scientists, he often needed to communicate with his colleagues, but Darwin's needs were unusual. In the first place, he lived for only short periods in centres where conversation with other scientists was possible. During his student days in Edinburgh and Cambridge he enjoyed personal contacts with university professors and other naturalists associated with the university communities; however, from 1831–1836 he sailed on the Beagle voyage. After his return he lived in London, the centre of British science, but only until 1842 when, partly due to ill-health, he withdrew to the rural village of Down in nearby Kent where he spent the rest of his life. Darwin was not totally isolated in Down. From time to time friends and colleagues paid visits, often to consult about scientific questions. Furthermore, Darwin travelled to London more frequently than has sometimes been supposed. In addition to occasional lengthier visits recorded in his Diary, he also made one-day trips, carefully recording his expenses in his account book. The record of his account book shows that during the early years in Down, he travelled to London more than a dozen times a year, though as he grew older the number of trips declined. Even during the early years, he still depended on the mail for much of the time to keep him in touch with fellow researchers.

Two analogies are at the foundation of editions of writings of scientists, technologists and physicians. Both are exemplified in the collection of ‘works’, texts of printed finished versions of contributions. The literary analogy is that of authorship, of the creation of a significant assemblage of words and other symbols. Assemblages of monographs and articles of a scientist are functionally no different than comparable arrays of the writings of theologians, philosophers, poets, novelists and historians.

‘In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God’. These words—taken out of their theological context—epitomize a common attitude among historians during most of Western history. By definition, there was no history before the advent of writing. Truly, for history, ‘in the beginning was the Word’ and, for nearly six millenia for the historian, ‘the Word was God’. As a consequence, words have dominated both the content and the form of historical works, including documentary editions. The close historical identity between reality and the mind and between ideas and words has reinforced the focus on words. There remain today philosophers who argue that thinking can only occur with words. It is not surprising, then, that a verbal conception of documents continues to dominate historical documentary editing. A few years ago, a famous American historian and documentary editor sought to convince me that documents were by definition, verbal.

Towards the end of the career of many a distinguished scientist, or shortly after his or her death, an edition of the scientist's articles is published under the title: ‘The Collected Papers of…’. While not wishing to slight either the ceremonial importance or real utility of such collections, they must be clearly distinguished from the sort of editions on which the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein is modelled. The former are primarily intended to make the published papers of a great scientist easily accessible to other scholars and students working in the same field as an aid to their research. The reader is provided with little or no help in understanding or evaluating the historical role these writings played in the development of this field, the circumstances leading to their creation, or how they fit into the life of their creator.

A great deal has been written concerning the impact of new technology on traditional publishing processes, leading to new forms of electronic publishing. Much less thought has been given to the effects of computerization on archival material. Yet, increasingly, records previously held in hard-copy form are being stored and handled electronically; this is particularly true of information in the scientific/technological/industrial area. In coming years, this will affect the work both of the archivist and of the historian seeking to use these records. It makes sense to try and anticipate the problems that computerization may create.

In 1979, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission began a programme of encouraging the use of automated techniques by its documentary editing projects with a series of small grants for lease/purchase of equipment. In addition to such projects as the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, the Samuel Gompers Papers, the Papers of Henry Laurens and the Papers of Marcus Garvey, which received funding from these early grants, other Commission-sponsored projects, such as the Papers of General George C. Marshall, initiated automation activities with institutional support or grant funds from other agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities.