Letter received March, 2008:

I write in support of . . .[Documents Compass, who will] inaugurate a service provider to meet the needs of editors who are planning scholarly documentary editions.

Since 2001 the University of Virginia Press has worked with many editors at documentary editing projects to develop digital documentary editions, some born-digital, and some converted from existing projects for publication.   This work is being carried out by the staff of the Press’s Electronic Imprint, publishing under the brand name Rotunda.  We now have a collection of six editions in a Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture series, and we are also building a collection of major editions of the American Founding Era.   The University of Virginia Press has a particular interest in documentary editions since we have published the Papers of George Washington and The Papers of James Madison for many years, and we have just published the four-volume set of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases.  We will also be publishing The Selected Papers of John Jay and other new documentary editions.

In the course of this work we have seen how important it is to receive materials for new projects in an orderly, well-planned way.   Very few existing documentary editions can deliver XML-coded files to their publishers.  Much time and cost would be saved if they could learn how to do so.   My colleagues and I see the proposed service provider, Documents Compass, as a very desirable step to help new projects prepare their materials for publication to the best current standards.   We believe that the learning curve for editors would be much less steep if such a service were available to new projects, and that this service could be a good intermediary between project and publisher.  It would be especially helpful to projects with small staffs.

My enthusiasm for the idea of Documents Compass is based on my respect for the people who are proposing it.  The documentary editing community would be most fortunate to have such a talented, dedicated, and imaginative group put their experience to work to help new projects and to assist established projects in the best use of new technologies.
. . .

Yours sincerely,

Penelope Kaiserlian
Director