College and Research Libraries Scholars, Librarians, and the Future of Primary Records Phyllis Franklin A survey of Modern Language Association members and of representatives of other associations participating in the American Council of Learned Societies indicates that the vast majority of those surveyed see ongoing need for collec- tions of primary records. Respondents note that neither photocopies nor digital records can satisfy the traditional needs of bibliographers, textual editors, and literary scholars; furthermore, renewed interest in the materiality of texts and the history of print promises to continue to influence scholars who study publications belonging to the print era. Scholars note an important disagree- ment about the nature of primary records. hat will scholars want from librarians in the years ahead as demands for access to in- formation stored in increas- ingly varied formats accelerate? Because the issues implicit in this question are of great importance to modem language scholars, the opportunity to discuss them with you is particularly welcome, al- though it is also a little unnerving. Trying to reach across communities is rarely easy. To prepare for the task, I followed a colleague's suggestion and consulted a book written by a former library direc- tor-Eldred Smith's The Librarian, the Scholar, and the Future of the Research Li- brary. Unfortunately for my sense of self- confidence, the book was not reassuring. Smith suggests that librarians are likely to view scholars as difficult--even ornery-people. According to Smith, scholars value convenience over reliabil- ity and depend primarily, in a wrong- headed way, on serendipity and what Smith describes as "alternative informa- tion-seeking methods" -informal net- works.1 Smith writes, "[S]cholars utilize library collections remarkably little, the bibliographic apparatus even less, and librarians' reference services hardly at al1." 2 And when scholars do turn to li- braries for what they are unable to find on their own, they can be quite disagree- able if what they want is not in. Actually, Smith is too polite to say scholars are disagreeable, but one senses restraint beneath his measured prose. Although some tensions between scholars and librarians seem unavoidable, the positive connections these groups have enjoyed seem equally important and date back to the nineteenth century and the development of research libraries in this country. Consider, for example, George Tic- knor, who, in 1819, became the first Smith Professor of French and Spanish Languages and literature at Harvard University. After earning an undergraduate degree from Harvard, Ticknor went abroad to study at the University of Gottingen. There he learned to see libraries in a new way, and he brought this vision back with him. In 1812, while he was still in Germany, he wrote to a friend: Phyllis Franklin is Executive Director of the Modern Language Association of America, 10 Astor Place, New York, New York 10003. A version of this article was presented as a talk at the American Library Association in 1992. 397 398 College & Research Libraries ... one very important and principal cause of the difference between [Harvard] and the [university] here is the different value we affix to a good library .... In America we look on the Library at Cambridge as a wonder, and I am sure nobody ever had a more thorough veneration for it than I had; but it ... is ... half a century behind the libraries of Europe. . . . [Even] worse than the absolute poverty of our collections of books is the relative in- consequence in which we keep them. We found new professorships and build new colleges in abundance, but we buy no books .... We have not yet learnt that the Library is not only the first convenience of the University, ... it is the very first necessity, ... it is the life and spirit .... 3 . As published knowledge grew and library collections expanded, the organization of research libraries became correspondingly complex, and a managerial class of librarians emerged along with collection specialists. Books were so important to Ticknor that he insisted that the university allo- cate funds for them before he would ac- cept the Smith professorship.4 The scholars who succeeded Ticknor- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell-were no less energetic about adding to Harvard's col- lections. They were joined in this effort by Francis Child, who taught rhetoric and English literature and who served as a model for generations of scholars.5 In tum, these scholars pressed for better collections in their college and univer- sity libraries. George Perkins Marsh, a modern lan- guage scholar who had struggled to be a scholar when no public collections of books existed, urged federal support of a national research library. As a member of the House of Representatives in 1844, Marsh opposed using the James Smith- son bequest for "agricultural schools, September 1993 popular lectures, chemical experiments, and other projects of immediate value to the common man." He pushed instead for "a big museum and a great national library for basic research and the diffu- sion of knowledge among scholars."6 Those who favored a museum and library won, although the book collection at the Smithsonian did not develop as Marsh hoped it would until it was moved to the Library of Congress in 1866. Modem language scholars continue to depend on libraries, even though, as Smith notes, they have their own infor- mation-seeking methods, not all of which are idiosyncratic. For example, the MLA International Bibliography was conceptualized by scholars and librari- ans working together. These instances of partnership be- tween scholars and librarians serve as useful reminders that the ground be- tween our communities has gradually shifted. As published knowledge grew and library collections expanded, the or- ganization of research libraries became . correspondingly complex, and a managerial class of librarians emerged along with collection specialists. Preoc- cupied by broad administrative ques- tions-for instance, strategic planning and fund development-these librarians had concerns increasingly different from those of scholars, whose work remained largely unchanged, though they played a smaller role in helping to build library collections. Smith's book exemplifies some of these changes and makes clear why administrators of large libraries must care about efficiency and coherent national systems. The book also demon- strates how removed administrators' need for efficiency and systematic order- ing can be from the research interests of humanities scholars. Although Smith insists on an essential connection between scholars and librar- ians, his definition of a research library omits a key function of the research li- brary for humanists. Smith writes: Throughout their history, research librarians have functioned as the con- servators of the record of scholarship. They have gathered and preserved the written, printed, and now electroni- cally encoded information generated by the scholarly process as well as other information of immediate or potential value to research.7 What Smith misses is the role research libraries play in collecting and providing access not only to the "record of scholar- ship," but also to the primary records modern language scholars-and many historians, linguists, musicologists, and folklorists-require for their work. Just as scientists look to the natural world as the object of their investigations, so many if not most humanists look to li- braries for the objects they study. Cer- tainly, the research library has been the chief repository of the primary records that modern language scholars edit, an- alyze, and interpret. What the sky is to the astronomer, the rain forest is to the botanist, and the hurricane is to the me- teorologist, the library is to scholars in the humanities. Perhaps that is why, as Smith himself notes, humanities collec- tions are used more frequently than are social science or science collections. 8 In addition to understating the impor- tance of library collections for humani- ties scholars, Smith has a vision of the future ideal research library. The library he describes would be even further re- moved from the realities of scholarship in the humanities because collections would be entirely in electronic form, with print formats of documents pro- duced on demand.9 Not all visions of the future are so bleak for scholars who study literature written and published in the print era. In the realm of science fiction, "Star Trek," a popular television series set in · the twenty-fourth century, makes a place for books in the otherwise hi-tech world of the Starship Enterprise. In "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Captain Picard reads books when he is off duty and enjoys . Shakespeare in this format. On one occa- sion, the creators of the series even indi- cate a preference for the book over the computer. "Only from a book," we are told by a lawyer in one episode, can we "learn the intent of the men who wrote the law," because computer information Scholars, Librarians, and the Future 399 is "homogenized, synthesized, [and] pasteurized." 10 Please do not misunderstand: humani- ties seholars are not Luddites. Since librar- ians already know that scholars can be ornery, they will not be surprised to learn that scholars expect to enjoy the advan- tages of both old and new technologies. Scholars respect the access photocopies and microfilms of the written and print records allow those who are unable to visit distant collections to study works of inter- est to them. They •recognize the need to save on microfilm at least an aspect of some of what was printed between 1850 and 1950. They welcome electronic databases of all kinds and electronic communication. Also they look forward to improvements in electronic scanning and to the creation of electronic texts of publications that ap- peared originally in print and publica- tions of new works as well. SURVEY RESULTS In addition, modern language scholars and other humanists want ongoing access to primary records in their original form. A survey of members of the Modern Lan- guage Association (MLA) who served on MLA committees in 1991 and of col- leagues in the American Council of Learned Societies is helpful on this point. In May 1992, 319 people were asked their views of the importance of rare books, archives, and the primary print record for scholars. Although the inquiry arrived at the end of the spring term, 169 people responded with letters, e-mail messages, and phone calls, which resulted in a response rate of 53 percent. The letters-many two to four pages long, some with comments on yellow Post-its added by colleagues, and others with copies of exemplary articles at- tached-testify to the value scholars place on primary records. Most respon- dents (95 percent) were MLA members, but a number of responses came from the administrative or elected officers of socie- ties concerned with American studies, art history, biblical studies, folklore, history, linguistics, and musicology. The results of the survey are clear. Only a handful of people-1.7 percent- 400 College & Research Libraries think copies will do, and another 3.5 per- cent believe our society cannot afford to maintain rare book collections and ar- chives. But the vast majority-94.5 per- cent-assert the need for these collections. They offer four general reasons. The majority-57 percent-affirm the impor- tance of primary records for the tradi- tional work done by bibliographers, textual editors, and literary critics. Shel- ley Fisher Fishkin of the University of Texas, Austin, whose studies of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and other writ- ings have been featured in the national press, is one of many who indicate their absolute dependence on the analysis of primary materials. Moreover, Fishkin is one of several respondents who report using rare book collections to teach graduate students. 11 Since librarians already know that scholars can be ornery, they will not be surprised to learn that scholars expect to enjoy the advantages of both old and new technologies. Along with emphasizing the need for primary records, 19 percent of the re- spondents question the stability and re- liability of the technologies currently used to make copies. The experiences Peter Manning of the University of Southern California recounts are typical. He writes: Sometimes the copying itself is im- perfect: r have used the depository co- pies of the Dove Cottage Papers at Cornell University and encountered several puzzles that became substan- tially clearer when I saw the originals in Grasmere-though Wordsworth's manuscripts are never completely transparent. Even if copying is well- nigh perfect, however, the copy does not permit the comparison of inks to distinguish layers of revision, say, and the other resources that expert scholars now habitually employ. In the case of books a similar argument holds for the ability to detect minor varia- tions in type, and depth of print, that September 1993 may help to determine editions, im- pressions, and possible forgeries. Even to the less bibliographically specialized scholar, there can be no substitute for the physical impression of a book: the watermarking, quality, and weight of its paper, its binding, its internal formatting, in contrast to other books of its day, all contribute importantly to its effect, its meaning, as a social act. My own criticism has involved tracking Wordsworth's ar- rangement of successive editions of his poetry, work that would be much harder to accomplish and much more liable to overlook key features of the original impression the publications made were it not possible to handle the books themselves. 12 Thirty-nine percent of the respondents cite as important scholars' renewed in- terest in the materiality of texts, and 28 percent point to the needs of those who study the history of the book. There is general agreement that primary records are an essential aspect of our culture and should be preserved in their original form, not, as Myra Jehlen of Rutgers Uni- versity, New Brunswick, says, because we expect "future readers will read Keats as he wrote or as we read [him]; but so long as they have him in his original form, they can read him historically." 13 Twenty-one percent of the respon- dents point to less tangible, aesthetic rea- sons for retaining rare book collections. Thomas M. Greene of Yale University writes: I confess that as a grandchild of the Renaissance humanists, I have a par- ticular slant on this issue. One can't exaggerate the intensity of the joy a humanist felt when he discovered the manuscript of a lost classical work in some monastery attic. The joy was produced first of all by the acquisition of an unknown text, but it was also produced by the physical presence of the artefact. The artefact, however badly copied, however moldered and dirty, was an object of veneration. And I must admit to vaguely similar feel- ings when I call for a great edition of the past in Beinecke library. I am not a religious believer, but I still recall the awe I felt when a copy of Erasmus's New Testament of 1516 was placed before me, that monumental version newly edited and translated in defi- ance of the church and all the author- ity of the Vulgate. This incredible triumph of the intellect (there were no Greek grammars available to Erasmus) and moral courage and patient tenacity, a triumph which rocked Europe, was there on the desk before me, with a fron- tispiece I never could have predicted. I wouldn't want to deprive future read- ers of that concrete object which de- serves to be honored as an icon of human achievement and bravery- both Erasmus's achievement and all the others before and after him. 14 THE FUTURE OF PRIMARY RECORDS These letters, Smith's book, and other writings about preservation suggest that three issues may have confused discus- sions of the future of primary records. First, the model of microfilming brittle materials, which the Commission on Preservation and Access ·developed, seems to have inadvertently led some, perhaps many, people to assume that what is appropriate for brittle materials applies by extension to most or all of primary records. Economy and effi- ciency drive this assumption. Microfilm- ing and the later conversion of microfilm to electronic formats will save storage costs and reduce the number of formats librarians must consider. Although financial pressures are com- pelling, the solution to one problem is not necessarily the solution to another. The technology that gave us a century of brittle books is only a blip. It is a signifi- cant one to be sure, but only a part of the longer print era. As far as the respdn- dents to this survey are concerned, when the choice is between losing the primary • record and having a copy, microfilm must stand in place of print. When the primary record is sound, however, mi- crofilm should be used only to supple- ment this record, whose integrity cannot . be replaced by images. Scholars, Librarians, and the Future 401 A second confusing factor grows out of our society's current situation some- where between the end of the print era and the beginning of the electronic era. Many of the proposals that prefer digital to primary records convey disdain for what is "old hat'' and therefore no longer of interest to forward-looking people. The king is dead; long live the king. That scholars' preoccupation with print should intensify while their use of electronic communication increases is intriguing. Major studies of the history of print have either just been completed (e.g., Roger Chartier's L' ordre des livres. Lec- teurs, auteurs, bibliotheques en Europe entre XNe et XVIIIe siecle) or are in progress (e.g., Ian Willison's history of the book before and after print). 15 The historians en- gaged in these projects may be moti- vated by simple nostalgia, or they may feel some urgency to grasp and describe an age that is passing. Whatever the cause, the fact remains: interest in print has been growing among modern lan- guage scholars. At the request of MLA members, three meetings at the 1992 MLA convention focused on Chartier's work, and Chartier himself spoke at ses- sions that were very well attended. There is general agreement that primary records are an essential aspect of our culture and should be preserved in their original form. For the sake of argument, let us as- sume the print era will conclude in the year 2055, precisely six hundred years after it started. Imagine that the produc- tion of print publications begins to slow down early in the next century and stops finally-and even ceremoniously-in 2055. If we knew change would happen this way, how would our communities, including scholars and librarians, ap- proach the question of preserving the primary print record, aware that the re- cord then in existence is all that will ever exist? Would we not consider what people one or two centuries from now might want to know about our society 402 College & Research Libraries and what scholars now and in the future will need to do their work? At this point, someone might wish to object. Won't many or most scholars be content with- even prefer-other formats? Won't strategically selected examples of the primary print record stored in rare-book collections or vaults or museums be sufficient for the relatively small number of scholars who might use them? Only 12 percent of the survey respon- dents think saving a few copies of a book will satisfy the needs of modem lan- guage scholars. The majority argue that our society should maintain as complete a record of print as possible because such a record will continue to be essential to scholars who wish to study the print era. For example, focusing on the history of Frank Norris's novel McTeague, Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., of Florida State Univer- sity notes the importance of collecting reprintings: The physical work of 1899, and its reprintings in 1900, 1902, 1903, and 1914 contain physical features which become data for ... analyzing the en- tire publication history .... The way in which the printed sheets were folded and sewn, the kind of paper used, the observable wear of the plates as print- ing followed printing, the corrections of the plates before the latest printing, the binding, inscriptions on the fly leaves, and even the gilding of the ends of the leaves-all of these fea- tures are sources of important informa- tion for the analytical bibliographer and historian of the printing industry in the United States, who provide informa- tion to other kinds of historians and to critics. 16 Charles B. Harris of Illinois State Uni- versity considers the same question from the perspective of a different novel. He writes: In an interview several years ago, John Barth mused about the ontologi- cal status of a novel. "Where," he wondered, "does a novel exist?" It's not the kind of question one would ask about a painting; the Mona Lisa, for example, hangs on a wall in the Louvre. All copies of it are just that, September 1993 copies, worth little when compared to the sole original that exists indispu- tably there in Paris. But where does Joyce's Ulysses exist? Is my paperback copy as authentic as the 1922 first edi- tion? Probably not (it certainly isn't worth as much in hard cash), although that first edition, which contains an estimated four thousand errors, isn't exactly Joyce's novel, either. Is Joyce's manuscript of Ulysses the "real" thing, then, and if so, which version of that manuscript? Gabler's "synoptic" text was supposed to give us a definitive edition but resulted in a scandal in- stead. Soon, Norton will publish the Dublin edition of Ulysses. But even if Kidd is more successful than Gabler ~as in pleasing the critics and textual scholars, will we be able to call that version the "real" Ulysses-and, if so, which of the several thousand copies of the Dublin edition Random House prints will we be able to point to as the real Ulysses? Clearly, no book-at least since the invention of the printing press-can ever exist in [the] same way as the Mona Lisa exists .... Like some Vedic god, a book exists in all its incarnations simultaneously.17 While some respondents express con- cern about scholars' ability to study the history of books, others fear the field itself will change if originals are not re- tained. Myra Jehlen writes: I am convinced that the disappear- ance of original texts would make the basic level of scholarship, the ground on which we all build, disappear. Without the possibility of looking at the actual materials we analyze, criti- cism, let alone historical studies, will be reduced to journalism. Literary scholar- ship will become an instrument for the distribution of literature-what book- reviewing is now; it will serve to intro- duce and mediate readings but will cease to be a primary analytical activ- ity in its own right. And without the continual rethinking that this primary activity constitutes and generates, journalistic criticism itself will also lose its edge and come mostly to repeat es- tablished views .... for the real work of preserving the cultural heritage, which is not to keep its dead but to keep it alive, it is essential to have the continuing presence of the original ob- ject. Not a transcription, not an ab- stract, but the thing itself.18 The letters cited above are useful not only because they reflect the ongoing interests of modern language scholars but also because they recall the com- plexities of establishing editions, which does not promise to become any simpler with electronic texts. In time, of course, the publications of the electronic era will grow in size and importance, but an interest in print will surely be sustained. At least some, per- haps a good deal, of the literature pub- lished between 1455 and 2055 will continue to be studied and taught, and scholars will want to consult original materials. Just as we value records from the ancient and medieval worlds and regard original documents as providing the best evidence for scholarship, so fu- ture generations of scholars will regard primary records. Lawrence Lipking of Northwestern University suggests that: the growing sophistication of elec- tronic substitutes for print will dramatically magnify the importance of preserving books. As old habits of reading become archaic, the printed artifact will turn into invaluable his- torical evidence, a lifeline to the past. Then, even more than now, libraries will be needed to remind readers that other people once read in different ways. 19 A third issue that has confused discus- sions of the future of primary records con- cerns a fundamental disagreement about the nature of these records. On one side are those who believe primary records contain information that is readily transportable from one format to another. On the other side are those who argue that the form and content of primary records cannot be separated without dramatically alter- ing the evidence the record provides. In several key essays G. Thomas Tanselle has explored this question and related issues. He believes that the "electronic revolution" encouraged a view of print Scholars, Librarians, and the Future 403 as information that is "independent" of its "container." Tanselle insists that for serious scholarly work, copies cannot re- place originals; he argues that "all books should be regarded as rare books." 20 Tanselle is not alone. It is remarkable that 28 percent of the survey respon- dents support his position, which has not been in circulation for very long. Some respondents even describe at- tempts to deny the important relation between form and content as pernicious. Eric Rentschler of the University of Cal- ifornia, Irvine, observes: To copy a book is to render impor- tant parts of the text intangible and irretrievable, to transmute a concrete object into an imaginary signifier. According to Christian Metz, film, or at least feature film, involves such a play with imaginary signifiers, the ob- jects on the screen always simul- taneously absent and yet present. (For this reason the cinematic apparatus is, one might argue, inherently pro- topostmodem.) In the case of rare books on microfilm (or other media), to make that signifier imaginary comes at the price of a great loss. A rare book perforce changes into a post- modern text, collected and encoded signs of which once we discard the original, there remains no material trace. In this way we quite literally lose "touch" with the past. 21 In "Preserving the Literary Heritage," a report prepared by the Scholarly Ad- visory Committee on Modern Language and Literature of the Commission on Preservation and Access, committee chair J. Hillis Miller recognizes the valid- ity of Tanselle's "eloquent defense for the need to have the actual books and papers for scholarly research." Although Miller and his colleagues on the Scholarly Committee on Modern Lan- guage and Literature accept the need for "microfilmed or digitalized preserva- tion," they assume copies are necessary when originals cannot be saved.22 The disagreement about the nature of primary records is not a trivial one for scholars, who look with considerable in- terest to the materiality of texts for a 404 College & Research Libraries better understanding of how these arti- facts were produced, received, and used. A number of respondents commented on this renewed emphasis in literary study. James Grantham Turner of the Univer- sity of California, Berkeley, writes: We now look at the physical book in a new and sharper light, informed by the theoretical study of the way signs and texts operate. Several of my current Ph.D. stu- dents have chosen to combine literary criticism with research into the mate- rial conditions of authorship, publica- tion, and book distribution, breaking down the distinctions, or exploring the relations, between the verbal meaning of the text and the cultural history of its production .... I insist that incoming graduate students, in their first course on problems and methods of literary interpretation, see a pre-modern printing press in action and handle original books and manu- scripts; to turn the luxurious pages of a Pope quarto, carefully designed and supervised by the author himself, or to unfold a letter of Mary Wollstonecraft, teaches more than many hours at the microfilm machine. The study of the material text, not as a merely pretty "artifact" but as an intrinsic element in its meaning, has never been so vitaJ.23 So important has the study of the material text become that some scholars report changing the way they carry out their research. Mary M. Gaylord of Har- vard University says about her work with Spanish Golden Age poetry: Whereas, a decade ago, I was read- ing more or less contentedly what works I could with the aid of modern scholarly editions, more recently I have returned to the physical ex- perience even of already edited old books and have emerged not only with materials which earlier editors did not see fit to reproduce ... but with a different understanding of the place of particular books in their cultures. 24 Interest in the materiality of texts has affected the study of noncanonical as well as canonical writers. William L. An- drews of the University of Kansas says: September 1993 We have known for a long time that authors like Mark Twain took very se- riously the way their writing would be packaged and sold, but we are much less knowledgeable about the econom- ics of publishing and printing books for persons outside the sphere of privi- lege in which Mark Twain wrote. Afri- can American writers of the nineteenth century, for example, often had to pub- lish their books at their own expense working hand-in-hand with local printers, the result of which was an arti- fact that often differs significantly from the mass-produced products of the larger commercial publishing houses. It would be a pity to limit or lose alto- gether our access to such artifacts as socioeconomic indicators while we are in the very process of trying to repro- duce them for wider study as literary media. 25 Just as we value records from the ancient and medieval worlds and regard original documents as providing the best evidence for scholarship, so future generations of scholars will regard primary records. Similarly, Ruth Bernard Yeazell of Yale University writes about her work with ladies' advice books and conduct manu- als "of the sort that were printed and reprinted in abundance in England and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." Though in one sense these would seem to be among the most expend- able of material-certainly their liter- ary value . . . is slight-the recent development of interest in women's culture and writing, especially in that produced anonymously, . . . "from below," . . . has made these texts of much more significance to scholarship than they might have been as little as a quarter century previously. And while what matters most, of course, is the words of advice that were so widely circulated, the size of such volumes, the quality of their paper, the form of their original binding (if known) all potentially testify to the classes to whom they were addressed and the uses to which they were ex- pected to be put. To lose the artifacts in such cases would certain! y be to lose some significant historical and cultural information.26 As far as archives are concerned, sur- vey respondents commend our present arrangements of collections in a variety of institutional settings. In a telephone interview, John Stephens of the Ameri- can Studies Association pointed out that much of the material that provided the basis for the social histories of the 1960s and 1970s was found in local historical societies, microfilms of local and state government records, and other scattered collections. Modern language scholars join historians in valuing the existence of local and regional archives that en- courage the collection of materials that might not make their way into more dis- tinguished settings but could someday be important to scholars. The history of scholarship makes clear that what some generations of scholars ignore, other generations value. James Gardner of the American Historical As- soda tion confirms this point by calling attention to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's treatment of a diary that a number of historians had examined over the years but had not used. Gardner says: "Ulrich ... saw in [the diary] something that the others did not and produced one of the most widely praised monographs in re- cent years." Ulrich's study, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, won four awards, including the Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes. Gardner adds that re- viewers of the book have "emphasized how Ulrich's work has expanded our sense of [which] texts are valuable, de- Scholars, Librarians, and the Future 405 monstrating that the non-elite, the ordi- nary people of the past, have left impor- tant primary sources that merit close reading and analysis, offering the poten- tial of better understanding of both an individual life and the larger social and historical context in which that person lived." Gardner concludes by saying, "I doubt that Martha Ballard's diary would have made it on to any priority list in terms of national significance."27 The survey results reported here are not likely to improve librarians' opinion of scholars, since the results do not pro- vide solutions to the serious funding and space problems libraries confront. What scholars want librarians to do is main- tain primary records in such a way that contemporary and future scholars who wish to study these artifacts will be able to do so. In addition, we all expect to go forward into the electronic era. There is one consolation. Modern language scholars stand ready to renew an old and honorable partnership with librarians. To- gether, we may be able to develop creative approaches to current problems and en- sure the survival of primary records for future generations of scholars and librari- ans. To this end, the MLA Executive Coun- cil has appointed a committee to consider the future of primary records. The associa- tion hopes to encourage discussion of the issues our communities face. As we move forward, we will keep in mind Robert Penn Warren's final state- ment in All the King's Men:" ... soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of his- tory into history and the awful responsi- bility of Time."28 MLA members believe, and perhaps you will agree, that our communities share responsibility for the records that others will someday need to tell-and retell-our history. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Eldred Smith, The Librarian, the Scholar, and the Future of the Research Library (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1990), 25. 2. Ibid., 21. 3. Orie William Long, Literary Pioneers: Early American Explorers of European Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1935), 12-13. 4. Ibid., 25-26. 406 College & Research Libraries September 1993 5. Phyllis Franklin, "English Studies: The World of Scholarship in 1883,"PMLA 99 (May 1984): 360, 366. 6. David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1958), 82. 7. Smith, The Librarian, the Scholar, 7. 8. Ibid., 21. 9. Ibid., 72. 10. Shalom Staub of the American Folklore Society called these "Star Trek" incidents to my attention, and James Franklin verified the substance of the incidents. 11. Fishkin to author, June 5, 1992. 12. Manning to author, June 8, 1992. 13. Jehlen to author, June 4, 1992. 14. Greene to author, June 2, 1992. 15. Roger Chartier, L'ordre des livres. Lecteurs, auteurs, bibliotheques en Europe entre XIVe et XVILLe siecle, (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992). 16. McElrath, Jr., to author, June 3, 1992. 17. Harris to author, June 4, 1992. 18. Jehlen to author, June 4, 1992. 19. Lipking to author, June 9, 1992. 20. G. Thomas Tanselle, Libraries, Museums, and Reading (New York: Book Arts Pr., 1991), 25,20. 21. Rentschler to author, June 12, 1992. 22. J. Hillis Miller, Preserving the Literary Heritage (Washington, D.C.: Commission on Preservation and Access, 1991), 2. 23. Turner to author, June 12, 1992. 24. Gaylord to author, June 20,1992. 25. Andrews to author, June 5, 1992. 26. Yeazell to author, June 12, 1992. 27. Gardner to author, June 23, 1992. 28. Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 438. IN FORTHCOMING ISSUES OF COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES The Readability of Published, Accepted, and Rejected Papers Appearing in College & Research Libraries Cheryl Metoyer-Duran Mature Librarians and the University Faculty: Factors Contributing to Librarians' Acceptance as Colleagues Jean A. Major Increasing Minority Representation in Academic Libraries: The Minority Librarian Intern Program at The Ohio State University Jose Diaz and Kristina Starkus