Introduction to the Digital Scholarly Edition of the Diaries of Jonathan Pearson

By Sam De Spuches

When we started creating a digital edition of Pearson’s Diary for the Summer IDEaS project, one of the first questions we tackled was: why do a digital edition? We immediately established that it wasn’t just to digitize a text and upload it on the internet, but to provide something that a printed edition couldn’t to a reader. Giving open access to virtually anyone is in itself very important, but it’s limiting to stop at that. With unlimited space to add any resource for the reader, we decided to utilize it and make the diary more interesting and involving.

Since the text is almost two hundred years old, there’s a lot that the reader doesn’t know about the world Pearson was living in. Giving that context was our main objective. We researched historical figures, places, prices, ideologies and events to give a broader picture of the story that’s being told. To the reader, it’s as simple as clicking on a link that brings you to a page that gives information on these matters, and suddenly there’s a chance that their curiosity can expand beyond the text.

As great as this all sounds, there are also some downsides to a digital edition. Once a book is printed, it’s assured to last a really long time; the same is not true for a website. There’s always a chance that all the work that was put into this website just disappears if the host stops giving the server space. Any number of things can happen to the page that we can’t even predict, and one thing is for sure: we have no guarantee that we can Google it in 100 years and find it in the same condition we left it. In short, the biggest concern with a digital edition is its longevity. To ensure it, it will need maintenance throughout the years. The advantage of a print edition is that it has virtually none.

Is it worth it if we’re not even sure it will last? I think the simple answer is yes, because the added benefits are so clear that we will find better solutions to make it more easily maintainable throughout the years. In a way, the internet is still in its infancy, and I think it’s improving every second because we all agree that it’s worth it, just like this digital edition.