Formation of digital databases of manuscripts: problems and textological perspectives. Article 2

This article is the second part of a two-part study of the key problems and possible prospects for the formation of digital archives of the manuscript heritage of writers. The work analyzes the existing approaches to the creation. The paper deals with the possibility of using electronic databases of manuscripts in textological researches, analyzes the existing experience in the preparation of digital manuscript archives and outlines the prospects for their integration into the theory and practice of modern textology. In the textological aspect, the electronic edition of the handwritten text should include two versions of the digital copy of the manuscript - a lightweight one, which involves a quick image download, and a detailed one, which has the highest resolution, as well as contain source, textological, linguistic and literary information, the transition to which is carried out by means of hyperlinks. The practice of collection of electronic databases of manuscript heritage of Russian writers shows that the possibility of studying manuscripts, concentrated in a single digital archive, allows to clarify the creative history of the text of a particular work, to determine its contextual relations, to fill the existing gaps, both in the manuscript itself and in its historical and cultural existence, to compare different versions and editions of the text of the work and to understand the creative logic of its meaning formation. It is concluded that the main parameters of collection of digital archives of the manuscript heritage of writers should be the authenticity of an electronic copy of its manuscript original, the availability of digitized materials to the scientific community, the presence of search and analytical resources in the structure of the electronic database and the development of new methods of work with the manuscript literary heritage.