Blogs and scholarly publications, literature search and Google

[ReneZ]

The aim is to help the study advance, by making clear where we got a particular idea about the manuscript, and where a newcomer can go back to read the evidence and reasoning behind that opinion.

This is very good. Providing information to newcomers is exactly why I started my website in 1998.
People don't all have to start from scratch.

Of course, if this is one's genuine aim, one should be careful not to lead people astray by giving false information.
It is better to say: "I don't know how much has been written about the imagery between 1912 and 2008" than to say there was (almost) nothing of value.

The first would be correct, the second not.

Equally, stating:

, but so little is left of his [i.e. Th. Petersen's] work,

is wrong, and apt to mislead people.

In Beinecke box 408-B there is correspondence from him ranging from 1935 to 1961.

In the Marshall library there is an even larger collection of letters and notes in items 1615.1 - 27 of the Friedman collection.


I will leave the Pandora's box of what is and what is not "informed" opinion tightly closed.