Page 267 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

Conclusion
Witsen’s interests and person al wealth made it possible for him to pursue a number of subjects and publish his findings in voluminous books. We are for- tunate that one of these interests included c ontemporary shipbuilding. He has left us with a very interesting but abstruse source. Even with Dutch readers with an interest in the subject, Witsen is notorious for the unstructured presentation of his material. But to users who have the stamina to delve deeper, it is a rich lode of information. Scholars and others who w ant to use thi s source turn to one of the facsimile editions and only rarely use the original. The publishers of facsimile editions of seventeenth-century works are not always aware of the fact that they need to research their material carefully. Any facsimile used for schol- arly purposes should present the readers with the result of such a study. In the case of Witsen’s books, by pure chance, the original used for the publication of the 1671 facsimile turned out to be a g ood choice, at least for those interested in shipbuilding. However , this is not the c ase with the 16 90 facsimile, which is clearly defective. Here other c hoices should h ave been m ade. The users of Witsen’s works in modern f acsimile should also h ave been m ade aware of the fact that the 1671 edition was a publi shed work available to many in its day , whereas the 1690 edition was never published and almost the entire stock was probably destroyed—therefore this edition c ould not have reached interested readers. Book archaeology, or bib liographical research, is vital in preventing modern-day publishers from m aking costly mistakes and in pro viding readers and scholars with a trustworthy source for further use and study.
Variations on Witsen
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