Literary manuscripts might be evaluated. The notes and annotations might offer tentative interpretations and logical arrangements of the materials, perhaps even incorporated into an historical narrative. When the scholar wants to discuss his tentative evaluations or interpretations with his or her peers, he or she would be able to make the private space public, or at least available to selected individuals, who would be able to annotate the sources, evaluations, or interpretations with comments, alternative interpretations, suggestions, and the like. The scholar might permit view-only access to everyone, but limit those who can deposit comments and further annotations. Such a private space might also be established by a closed community that shares control and governance, with all members having the same rights and responsibilities.
Many configurations are possible.
Regardless of the configuration, two features are critical. First, the structured underlying database built by the library and archival community provides access to a rich, relatively stable and therefore reasonably predictable storehouse of primary source materials upon which scholars can confidently build their intellectual structures. Second, the archival and library community, and the research community each maintains control over those portions of the information space essential to their respective missions. Although scholars work and communicate informally while they are engaged in their research, current intellectual and cultural fashion requires that they formally interact with the academic and publishing communities, negotiating recognition of the value of their creative works, and ultimately passing custody and control over it to others. The communities that play different roles in the comprehensive and complex process of creating, evaluating, canonizing, disseminating, utilizing, organizing, and preserving the human record require that new research, if it is to become part of the record, must be objectively established, captured and fixed in a stable, identifiable, verifiable form.