How will the literary researchers of the future be able to understand the thought processes of great authors? With handwritten manuscripts, the authors notations, edits and revisions are captured on the page, which can themselves be captured digitally. A page of Jane Austen's mansucript for Persuasion for example, shows how she worked to refine the language and tone of her work.The sale to the British Library of the archive the poet Wendy Cope included personal items such as school reports and 40,000 emails. The poet had 'displayed an archival consciousness' and her wide ranging and rich archive will be catalogued and made available to researchers.Meanwhile, BBC Radio 4 this week broadcast Tales from the Digital Archive, featuring an interview with the British Library's first Curator of Digital Mansuscripts. The programme explores how technology, far from cutting researchers off from the creative process, can actually become part of the archive itself. At Emory University in the US, the computers on which Salman Rushdie wrote his bestsellers are held in an archive where they are as valued as highly as any leather-bound hand-written manuscript. Perhaps there are career opportunities for information and archive specialists to work alongside great authors and help them to maintain their creative archives!And as a postscript, the marvellous website Letters of Note publishes a covering letter from 14-year old Stephen King who sent one of his stories for consideration by Spaceman Magazine in 1961. The story was rejected...