Dear listers,
I hope I am not repeating anything that's been said before, in which
case I apologize, but here are just a few remarks on Peirce
manuscripts to avoid confusion. (Joseph's reply just arrived, as I
was writing this).
The two images here are (at least) second generation photocopies of
the Robin microfilms of Peirce's papers (held in Harvard's Houghton
library). These photocopies bear rubber-stamped numbers in the lower
righthand side corner indicating MS (799) and page no. (00002), not
found of course on the originals. The MS no. also appears in pencil,
top left, in the hand of P. Weiss, written directly on the original.
Photocopies such as those submitted here often bear annotations about
ink color and such, since this information is lost after filming mss
in b/w. In the present case (say, the 1st image), the title "Ten
Classes of Signs", the arrows, the indications about brown and red
ink, etc. are NOT Peirce's. From what I can make out I would say the
numerals are his though.
When the Peirce edition Project publish a ms in the Writings,
everything that is not Peirce's is of course taken out, and important
information (such as the brown-red change in ink color by Peirce) is
noted so as to give the clearest possible idea of the appearance of
the original. Contrary to the Writings, neither the CP nor EP are
critical editions in the strict sense (although the latter are based
on the PEP's editorial work done for the Writings).
The easiest access to Peirce's papers is of course to work directly
from the Robin microfilms. I might be wrong but I think the Bill
Gates idea has been tried already (computer switch, name dropping and
all). As for digitization, Harvard Libraries are rather reluctant as
the rules for the protection of the manuscripts are quite strict; in
any case they wouldn't let just anyone bring in a scanner and do it,
obviously. Digital microfilm viewers/scanners are the easiest way to
view the microfilms onscreen, but there are copyright issues with the
scanning of the films, which remain Harvard's property.
David
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