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Researching Literary Manuscripts: a Scholar's Perspective

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Researching Literary Manuscripts: a Scholar's Perspective 62 American Archivist / Vol. 56 / Winter 1993 Perspective SCOTT CLINE, editor Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/56/1/62/2748462/aarc_56_1_a086x87800058u02.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Researching Literary Manuscripts: A Scholar's Perspective LOIS MORE OVERBECK Abstract: Scholars who do their research in literary manuscripts appreciate the profes- sionally managed archival research collection and the archivist's role as a mediator between collectors and researchers. The author, a literary editor, discusses how the issues of co- pyright, restrictions on access, arrangement, description, reference policies, and copying are viewed by literary researchers and calls for collaboration between scholars and archi- vists to make information about collections more accessible. About the author: Lois More Overbeck is associate editor of The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and a research associate with the Graduate School of Emory University. She edited The Beckett Circle (1984-89) and co-edited Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre of Adrienne Kennedy (1992). Invited to represent the scholar's perspective on literary archives, she presented a version of this paper at the fifty-second annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Atlanta in October 1988. A Scholar's Perspective 63 JUST AS THE NATURE of an archival collec- blocked because of company policy or gov- tion informs the nature of the inquiry, so ernment regulations. does the inquiry influence a scholar's per- Out of experiences such as these comes. ception of archives and their role in re- appreciation of the comprehensiveness and search. In recent research on the accessibility of a professionally managed correspondence of Samuel Beckett, my research collection, the service of archi- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/56/1/62/2748462/aarc_56_1_a086x87800058u02.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 colleague and I have worked in many fine vists in developing, deciphering, preserv- archival collections in the United States and ing, and arranging the collection, and most abroad and have come to rely upon the of all the supportive collegiality between professional support of archivists. But it is curator and researcher that makes a literary the research we have done in materials not archives a productive and enjoyable place administered by professional archivists that to work. has made us appreciate the archivist's work. The Archivist as Mediator Between Appreciation of Archival Management Collectors and Researchers Literary research may take the scholar to materials that are not a part of library- or Literary researchers value archivists who archives-based manuscript collections. For share an understanding of the scholarly example, the study of a twentieth-century process and commitment to support re- author often involves examination of rec- search. However, what researchers take for ords that are still in the hands of a publish- granted sometimes may be at issue for the ing company. Scholars value such records archivist or for those who fund archives. A for their primary or secondary relationship reason for this becomes evident when we to study of the literary text, while the owner consider the archivist's role vis-a-vis the may view them simply as a record of busi- collector who may donate materials and the ness transacted. They may be poorly main- researcher who will use them. tained, difficult to access, and inadequately Literary manuscripts curators and re- supported with personnel or copy services. searchers encounter private collectors far more The researcher may have to sort the frequently than do archivists and archival users files—assuming that the company permits in most other fields. The collector acquires this—before the pertinent documents can literary manuscripts to see them preserved be studied. Because files must be main- and for exclusivity of ownership. The more tained as found, selected papers must be popular or significant the work and the rarer copied and replaced in files one at a time. the document, the greater the value of the The researcher with questions may find that collection. Value is preserved by maintaining the current staff has little understanding of rarity, sometimes by restricting the use and the original context or previous office prac- publication of such materials. tice. When the immediate research is com- On the other hand, the researcher values pleted, the files must be returned to storage, the richness of association that a manu- so that if verification is needed in the fu- script suggests, as well as the document ture, all of the materials would need to be itself. The scholar uses literary manuscripts brought out of storage and the whole process to understand an author's work and creative of sorting begun again. Even a company methods or to infer characteristics of a lit- with some archival support may not be in erary period; the assemblage of a collection a position to respond to scholars' requests of an author's work in one place increases with efficiency or adequate understanding its interpretive value. Dissemination through of their research process. In other cases, interpretation is the scholar's purpose. Value full access to business archives may be is enhanced by wide dissemination of 64 American Archivist / Winter 1993 scholarly work and even publication of the scripts include access, arrangement of ma- literary manuscripts themselves. terials, bibliographic description of collections, A literary manuscripts curator is neither reference and photoduplication policies that a private collector nor a researcher but plays assist research accuracy, and collaboration the difficult role of mediating between the among archives that facilitates comparative Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/56/1/62/2748462/aarc_56_1_a086x87800058u02.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 sometimes competing values of the two. use of materials. Ideally, archival administration of literary Ownership, copyright, and restricted manuscripts addresses the collector's val- use. Written or oral materials of living ues through preservation, documentation, writers, correspondence between (or refer- and security and, at the same time, meets ring to) living persons, and correspondence the researcher's need for access and inter- pertaining to active business operations all pretation through arrangement, descrip- comprise rich veins for research, but not tion, copy services, knowledge of collateral without caveat. Problems of ownership, le- collections, and referrals for permissions. gal and informal acknowledgement of the Even before Candide the "best of all right to privacy, and accessibility to and possible worlds" was considered a "blue publication of material have become press- sky" proposition, but in the twentieth cen- ing issues. The archivist must determine tury the archivist's mediating role is be- the appropriate middle ground between the coming ever more challenging. As researcher's purposes and the legal limits preservation needs have become more crit- of inquiry that must be observed for any ical and the techniques of preservation more living author or work within copyright. sophisticated, the costs of maintaining a All policies related to access and use ul- collection have risen. Financial preroga- timately involve ownership and copyright. tives often permit donors to exercise con- When ownership of documents is trans- trol over their manuscripts, even after they ferred, whether to another generation in a are placed in the care of archives. As the family or to an archives, permission to pub- costs of acquiring collections rise, archives lish may be extraordinarily difficult for the may find it difficult to obtain institutional researcher to obtain unless copyright has commitment to the long-term needs of de- been assigned. In the case of correspon- velopment, curatorship, and bibliographi- dence, the recipient of a letter owns the cal services. More than good intentions and physical document, but copyright (owner- sound policy are required to reconcile the ship of the literary rights) is held by the interests of the collector and the user of writer; if the recipient gives the documents literary manuscripts. to a publicly accessible archives, he or she has no authority to transfer copyright for Issues that Matter to Literary what was written by others.1 Although it is Researchers standard practice to register information such The papers of persons who have made their as restrictions, rights, publication, and living and reputation through their writing ownership (including ownership of the lit- may offer special circumstances not usual for erary rights that may not have been as- materials in other types of archives. In lit- signed to the archives), archivists can assist erary research, all written products are po- researchers by maintaining updated files. tentially related to the evolution of the texts Naturally archivists must honor the terms that define an author's canon. In addition, collateral correspondence and manuscript materials may have a bearing on the works 'For more complete discussion of these issues, sec Trudy Huskamp Peterson and Gary M. Peterson, Ar- or their contexts. Thus the issues that are chives and Manuscripts: Law (Chicago: Society of foremost for researchers in literary manu- American Archivists, 1985). A Scholar's Perspective 65 under which collections have been devel- uscripts comprises a valued
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