Policies

Scope

Melville's Marginalia Online reproduces Melville's markings and annotations in the books that survive from his library. Properly conceived, it is an edition not of the books themselves, but of the marginalia inscribed therein. Although the project's "Online Catalog" documents all lost and surviving books Melville is known to have owned or borrowed, its library of PDF files does not duplicate the full texts of surviving books, nor does it include surviving copies that Melville did not mark or annotate.

Users investigating a copy represented in the PDF library will find there accurate transcriptions of Melville's marginalia and their immediate textual environments—in all but the rarest cases eliminating the need for researchers to consult Melville's original copies. But users should bear in mind that marked and annotated pages alone do not provide full evidence of Melville's reading. Melville of course read more than what he marked, and owing to a remarkably retentive memory he retained and applied much more of his reading than his surviving marginalia can indicate. Users should investigate the texts of books in their entirety before publishing research based exclusively on evidence provided in the present edition. When available, facsimile or microfilm copies of editions owned by Melville are identified in the bibliographical sections of the introductions and commentary to marginalia.

While the PDF library does not provide full-text substitutes for Melville's books, the edition provides considerable textual context for study of the marginalia. Each PDF copy displays textual surrogates of what Melville had in front of him whenever he applied pencil to page, and thus duplicates both the targeted text areas and the facing text areas, regardless of whether the facing text areas are marked. Superimposed upon a photographic background image, each textual transcription presents the semblance of an open book. The underlying digital photo image functions as a generic background to the edited text and marginalia and does not duplicate the material qualities of Melville's original bound copies.

Markings and Annotations

As illustrated in the following excerpt from the edition of Melville's marginalia in Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale, Melville inscribed a variety of different markings into his books, consisting of x's, checkmarks, circles, underlines, pointers, and marginal scores in straight, arced, and curvilinear shapes.

Not shown here are combinations of the above (crossed checkmarks, double and triple scores, double underlines, circled x's and circled checkmarks) and entirely different sigla such as brackets, boxes and asterisks. This assortment of markings appears standardized throughout the edition, which observes salient distinctions among marking varieties and sub-varieties (i.e., straight and arced scores) but does not attempt to reproduce the exact contours of the originals as they appear in Melville's hand.

Melville normally recorded annotations in the top, bottom, and outside margins of the page, and usually linked them to text with corresponding x's. In its transcriptions of annotations, the edition represents Melville's words in large, bold, italicized, characters. Editorial policy is to observe the marginal locations of Melville's inscriptions as well as the distributions of Melville's words per written line. But whereas it positions annotations within the same marginal areas as the originals, the edition does not attempt to duplicate the exact spatial relationships between Melville's individual words and the printed text areas

Extant versus Erased Marginalia

Erasures are common among Melville's marginalia, and indeed one of the strengths of the present edition is its recovery of erased marginalia and the new light these shed on Melville's reading and composition. Where applicable, the edited transcriptions distinguish between extant and erased marginalia, with extant marginalia signified by black marks and letters, and erased marginalia represented in gray, as exemplified in the above sample by the annotation and markings, respectively. In order to ensure that these color distinctions display accurately, consult the "Preferences" option under "Edit" in the Adobe Reader menu bar, and make sure that in the "Accessibility" category of this option the box entitled "Replace Document Colors" is unchecked.

Although erased markings are with rare exceptions fully recovered, Melville's erased annotations range among the fully deciphered, the partially deciphered, and the undeciphered. As illustrated in the sample below (again from Melville's marginalia to Beale), deciphered erasures are represented in the same manner as extant annotations, but as gray rather than black. Partially deciphered annotations appear with editorial insertions enclosed by square brackets. Where words and letters can be responsibly conjectured on the basis of material evidence, these bracketed conjectural readings appear in non-italicized characters. Undeciphered words appear bracketed as question marks preceded and followed by dashes.

Use of Required Software

The project's edited PDF transcriptions of Melville's marginalia must be viewed in version 7.0 or higher of Adobe Reader. To obtain a free copy of Reader 7.0, click on the Adobe icon in the left sidebar of the screen. When in "Full Screen" mode (Control key plus "L"), move forward and backward through a document using the arrow keys. To devote your entire computer screen to the PDF image, you will also need to activate the "Full Screen" feature of your web browser. Exit Adobe "Full Screen" by pressing the Escape key. When viewing the PDF transcriptions in magnified mode (Control key plus "M"), navigate from one part of the image to others by clicking and dragging the transcription with the hand tool.

To view editorial and critical commentary in Adobe Reader, position the white hand tool directly over marked text and annotations. The comments will appear automatically in soft-yellow colored boxes. If the yellow comment box blocks the textual material to which it is linked, reposition the box by moving the pointer over a different area of the marked text or annotation. In rare instances, the comment box may be too small to display all of the text, and in these cases the comment can be fully viewed in an alternate pop-up box by clicking on the marked text or annotation itself. In normal view mode, click the "Comments" tab in the lower left corner of the Adobe Reader viewing screen to scroll sequentially through all of the commentary in the file you are viewing.

Operation of the PDF files and the quality of text and images may vary according to operating systems, browser settings, and other variables. Users are encouraged to experiment with the viewing preferences available in Adobe Reader, and to establish settings that suit them. Individual transcriptions are searchable using the Adobe "Search" feature (Control plus "F" on the keyboard). To include the commentary in a search, click the "Search" icon at the top of the screen in Adobe Reader, and check the box labeled "Include Comments." Melville's Marginalia Online will soon feature a Google search function devoted to the PDF library as a whole.

Citation and Institutional Permission

Documentation for written or edited material quoted or cited in articles, books, and other forms of publication should include author and title information plus Melville's Marginalia Online, the project editors, the date of access, the URL, and (if applicable) the page number. The following three examples document edited marginalia, a critical introduction, and critical commentary.

Marginalia in a PDF transcription:
Melville, Herman. "Melville's Marginalia in Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale." Melville's Marginalia Online. Ed. Steven Olsen-Smith, Peter Norberg, and Dennis C. Marnon. 1 January 2008. <www.boisestate.edu/melville/>, 60.

A critical introduction to a PDF transcription:
Giordano, Matthew. "Introduction to Melville's Marginalia in James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems." Melville's Marginalia Online. Ed. Steven Olsen-Smith, Peter Norberg, and Dennis C. Marnon. 1 January 2008. <www.boisestate.edu/melville/>.

Commentary within a PDF transcription:
Cook, Jonathan A. "Commentary to Melville's Marginalia in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse." Melville's Marginalia Online. Ed. Steven Olsen-Smith, Peter Norberg, and Dennis C. Marnon. 1 January 2008. <www.boisestate.edu/melville/>, 155.

The Online Catalog
"Online Catalog of Books and Documents Owned, Borrowed and Consulted by Herman Melville." Ed. Steven Olsen-Smith, Peter Norberg, and Dennis C. Marnon. 1 January 2008. <www.boisestate.edu/melville/>.

Permission for displaying photographic images on this web site was granted by the holding institution for one-time use only. Users should not download or copy an image without written consent from the institution named in the permission box linked to the image, or on the "Photo Credits" page of this web site.