Mill Marginalia Online is now nearing completion. Earlier this month, I visited Somerville College Library for what should be my last data-gathering trip, photographing pages missed during earlier visits or mislaid during previous website migrations and capturing the marginalia in a recently rediscovered volume (vol. IV) of The Works of Francis Bacon. Mill’s hand was only indirectly in evidence in the latter, which had been subjected to erasures by doubtless well-meaning librarians and then marked and annotated again by at least one subsequent Somerville reader, who had found Bacon’s words “constructive”:
Still barely discernible are also numerous faint scores, underlines, and marginal X-marks that appear consistent with the other volumes in The Works and, indeed, throughout Mill’s library – erased but not forgotten, he remains a ghostly inscribed presence throughout this volume.
At the same time, Mill’s web presence is soon to receive a major update. Eric Culus, of Mijnwebsiteonline is hard at work redesigning the underlining architecture of Mill Marginalia Online to maximize querying speed, minimize uploading complications, and greatly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of user searches. The new site should seamlessly replace the old site before the end of summer, with all remaining data transcribed and uploaded before the end of the calendar year.
At that point, researchers anywhere in the world should have access to the totality of marginalia in Somerville’s John Stuart Mill special collection. Then shall the bacon (and Bacon) be brought home indeed!
Albert D. Pionke, Project Director