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abstract USC Digital Voltaire, a digital, multimodal critical edition of autograph letters, aims to combine the traditional scope of humanities inquiry with the affordances and methodologies of digital scholarship, and to support scholarly inquiry at all levels, beyond the disciplines associated with Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Digital editing, and digital editions in particular, will likely expand in the next few decades as a multitude of assets become digitized and made available as online collections. One important question is: What role will librarians and archivists play in this era? USC Digital Voltaire points in one possible, creative direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author recounts her experience of working in the Emma Goldman Papers Project, an archive about topics related to the women anarchist, at the University of California in Berkeley. She cites the reasons for contemporary archive panic, including the vast expansion of archiving and archivable materials through electronic technologies. Definitions of an archive is also provided. She expresses her desire to investigate the political conditions that confine archival materials and work for their liberation.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Kathy Ferguson on working in the Emma Goldman Papers Project at University of California in Berkeley and another on a symposium on the book "Legitimation Crisis," by Jürgen Habermas.