I want to respond primarily to memory, (re)membering, and forgetting in two ways; 1) in institutional/historical/archival senses and in personal ones; and 2) in physico-cognitive and digital senses. Douglas’ article (appropriately) moved me in a number of ways, especially the descriptions she had of Montgomery’s creation, recreation, remembering and literal re/dis-membering of her self and her journals: The journal served, initially, as an “old friend” in whom she could confide and an outlet—her “only safe outlet”—for her “grumbles” ….

Reviewed articles:
(1) Dryden, Jean. “The Role of Copyright in Selection for Digitization.”
(2) Miller, Larisa. “All Text Considered: A Perspective on Mass Digitizing and Archival Processing.”
(3) Ogilvie, Brian. “Scientific Archives in the Age of Digitization.”
(4) Terras, Melissa M. “The Rise of Digitization: An Overview.”

At the recent serendipitous American Historical Association and Modern Language Association Annual Meeting/Conference/mashup that happened in Chicago in January of 2019, Session 40 happened to attract a lot of crossover members. The session, titled “The Future Is Now: Lessons Learned from Three Digital Dissertations in History” featured a mix of 7 historians, archivists, literature scholars, digital humanities and librarians discussing some of the promises and features of digital humanities, archives and research for PhD. projects.¹

If there was a theme that carried through each of these speakers and the panel as a whole it was the fearsome and oft-whispered term copyright. Indeed, this was a term that hung over and was carried through much of these conferences, as they took place amidst a major public domain copyright expiry.² Copyright is the spectre haunting the humanities—and it is the major limitation on what archives can achieve today and how much librarians and archivists are willing to go as a vast variety of authorities point out: