wily coyote moment
“Most attention is paid to the cost of scanning (photographing the pages and processing them), but I cannot emphasize enough that the greatest costs of building a digital library are those borne by the brick-and-mortar libraries. Libraries spend billions each year building, curating, and maintaining their collections. So, the real value, and costs, are in the books and the libraries. This aspect is too often overlooked and undervalued.”
Open Content Alliance
Advocates for digital research and screen reading are oblivious of the functionality of physical books and print libraries.
epiphani
Nicholas Carr at
Rough Type is adventuring among simulants with wonderful insights. I have purged my watch list down to authentic content of Carr, Demsey and
Woods.
not one url
The awesome
bibliography of G. Tom Tanselle presents 370 pages of citation without a single url. FotB received two citations well undeserved in the company of the others.
busy original
Back-up, copy master, and reality check; the source original is always busy. Library digitizers snicker that physical copies are inaccessible and never used but they don’t appreciate the dependence of screen simulations.
Physical originals back up the screen simulations providing a low cost mirror of digital content. They also stand ready as the source for re-simulation. The old saw of a “one-time capture” is increasingly inept in context to changing research needs and churning access technologies. Finally, physical originals are the only format that will sustain deep authentication. Only the real thing will withstand the forensic and intellectual pursuit of evidence of provenance and the intentions of authors, publishers, producers and readers.