Text Modernization and Rights

Purpose

The Confessional Bibliology Source Library prepares historic Protestant and Reformed works for reading, citation, and research. Modernization can remove accidental barriers created by obsolete spelling and typography, but it can also alter an author’s meaning if the editorial layer is not clearly defined. This policy governs how those layers are named, prepared, licensed, and corrected.

The Underlying Work and the New Edition

The rights status of the historic work is distinct from the rights status of a scan, transcription, modernization, translation, introduction, apparatus, or index. A public-domain text remains public domain. A hosting institution may nevertheless impose terms on the use of its images, and a new editorial contribution may carry its own license.

Every edition page must therefore identify:

• the underlying work’s rights status;
• the source copy and provider;
• any terms governing the source images;
• the creator and license of the new transcription or editorial work;
• the version and date of the released file;
• any known limitations or unverified portions.

No file is described as freely reusable merely because it can be downloaded.

Distinct Editorial Layers

Source Facsimile

A facsimile reproduces images of a source copy. It must identify the holding institution or provider, the edition represented, completeness, image-processing history, and any reuse terms. Processed images must not overwrite the preservation master.

Diplomatic Transcription

A diplomatic transcription represents the chosen exemplar as closely as the medium permits. Original spelling, capitalization, punctuation, paragraphing, marginal signs, Scripture forms, and original-language material are preserved. Editorial expansions or supplied text must be visibly marked. A diplomatic transcription does not silently adopt a later editor’s correction.

Normalized Standard Text

A normalized standard text may regularize layout, catchwords, line-end hyphenation, obvious typographic accidents, and other features that obstruct continuous reading without changing the wording. Every category of normalization must be declared, and substantive uncertainty remains in the notes or apparatus.

Modernized Reading Edition

A modernized reading edition may update obsolete spelling, selected punctuation, capitalization, and clearly accidental forms for present-day readers. It must preserve the author’s order of thought, qualifications, examples, citations, subordinate arguments, emphasis, technical vocabulary, and theological distinctions.

Modernization is not paraphrase. It does not simplify doctrine, improve an argument, replace the author’s terminology with the editor’s preferred terminology, or silently harmonize quotations to a modern source.

Translation

A translation is a separate editorial act. It must identify the source text, translator, review status, and unresolved readings. Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or another language should not be replaced by an unattributed machine rendering.

Annotated Research Edition

An annotated edition may add introductions, explanatory notes, cross-references, Scripture indexes, subject indexes, textual notes, and bibliographic apparatus. All additions must remain distinguishable from the historic author’s text.

What May Be Modernized Silently

Within a file explicitly labeled a modernized reading edition, editors may normally modernize:

• obsolete spelling and predictable inflectional forms;
• long s and obsolete typographic forms;
• routine capitalization and punctuation where the sense is not changed;
• broken words and line-end hyphenation caused by the original page layout;
• clearly identifiable printer’s errors, when the correction is recorded in the edition notes or correction list.

“Silently” here means that every routine instance need not carry a footnote. The edition’s modernization statement must still name the categories applied.

What Must Not Be Modernized Silently

Editors must not silently alter:

• theological terminology or technical distinctions;
• the wording of Scripture quotations;
• Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or other original-language material;
• ambiguous wording whose interpretation is disputed;
• the substance or order of an author’s argument;
• historical names, titles, bibliographic data, or polemical claims;
• quotations from other authors.

If a source reading is uncertain, the public text must mark the uncertainty rather than conceal it with a fluent guess.

Scripture Quotations

Historic Scripture wording is evidence. It may reveal the Bible used by the author, the textual form before him, or the way a passage functioned in an argument. It must therefore be preserved in diplomatic and normalized layers.

A modernized edition may regularize typography within a quotation, but it must not silently replace the quotation with the Authorized Version or a modern translation. If a parallel modern Bible text is useful, it should be supplied separately and labeled.

Original Languages

Greek, Hebrew, and Latin receive focused verification. The edition should retain the original text where it can be established, provide a translation when useful, and identify the translator or source of the translation. Illegible letters, damaged lines, unusual ligatures, and uncertain accents must be marked for review rather than reconstructed without notice.

Corrections and Conjectures

Clearly identifiable printer’s errors may be corrected in normalized and modernized layers, but the source form and correction must remain recoverable. Conjectural emendation requires an explicit note and may not be presented as though it were read directly from the exemplar.

Substantive corrections after publication receive a new version number and an entry in the public revision history. Prior releases should remain archived when legally and technically possible.

Required Edition Information

Every completed free edition should contain or link to:

• a modern title page;
• an original title-page transcription;
• full bibliographic information, including STC or Wing number where applicable;
• source-copy and acquisition information;
• an editorial introduction;
• declared transcription and modernization principles;
• a list of substantive corrections and uncertain readings;
• Scripture and subject indexes when the scale of the work warrants them;
• a version number, permanent web address, and revision history;
• a rights and license statement;
• a disclosure of machine assistance and the extent of human verification.

Licensing Standard

The adopted Source Library policy separates factual or source-near layers from creative editorial layers. Library-created diplomatic transcription and factual metadata normally default to CC0 1.0. Library-created normalized text, modernization, introductions, translations, apparatus, indexes, and editorial notes normally default to CC BY-SA 4.0, subject to legal review, contributor agreements, and the terms attached to source images.

The license on the editorial contribution does not convert a proprietary scan into an openly licensed image, and it does not claim copyright in the underlying public-domain work.

Editorial Accountability

Machine assistance may be used for OCR, collation support, modernization suggestions, reference discovery, and consistency checks. It may not supply an unverified quotation, an invented citation, a final translation, or an unsupported reading. Named human editors remain responsible for every public verification and rights claim.

Questions or documented corrections should be submitted through the Contact page and will be handled under the Corrections and Revisions policy.

Source Record

• Confessional Bibliology Source Library Manual, version 1.0
• John Owen 1659 Pilot Work Warrant and Source-Acquisition Dossier, version 1.0