ABSTRACT
The most common treatment of images of manuscripts within electronic editions of historical papers has been as an 'added extra' rather than as an 'integral component' of the research resource provided by the edition. The Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive at the University of Virginia contains transcripts of over 1,500 letters by Jefferson, digital images are provided for only a small selection of them. Historians seem to be chiefly interested in making available large quantities of text and in quickly recovering particular pieces of information. The cost of making available the large quantities of information demanded by historians has always been an important factor in determining the form of publication of historical records. Digital images give a new awareness of the physical character of the historical records which should be at the heart of our historical understanding. Image-based editions of historical documents offer the potential to move towards that archivists' history of which Galbraith dreamed.
