setting one hundred thousand names
Here is a blurb on Larry Raid and the recent Linotype University session.
ithaka
“The large-scale digitization of print journal collections has led to most access needs being met via digital surrogates. Numerous libraries would therefore like to reassign the space occupied by print collections towards higher-value uses. What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future.”
It is disconcerting that the rationales for community attention to print retention do not include the most obvious; authentication of screen surrogates. The print collections are self-authenticating, capable of continuing forensic and bibliographical investigation. As importantly their contents, physical and conceptual, are overt permitting verification of absence as well as presence of an evidence. This attribute is particularly relevant in support of screen based delivery from print sources since the surrogates cannot sustain such continuing, wide ranging and unforeseen examination.
If the role of self-authentication of print is acting in direct interdependence with its screen delivery there are other roles that follow including back-up, during any disruption to screen delivery, and mastering for rescanning for purposes not attended or to overcome capture inadequacies.
On another note, Nicholson Baker did not advocate saving everything or “thousands of copies”. Nicholson Baker advocated saving one copy much as is also advocated in this report. What Baker did bemoan was transmitting print culture via inadequate and transient simulations.
case construction
The new book by Robert Darnton appears to charge off in two directions; describing an apparent prosperity of a digital world of letters and describing an apparent prosperity for libraries and paper books. These are not incompatible futures since libraries and books are now digital productions. The needed following layer is definition of underlying interdependencies of screen and print reading and analog and digital transmission of culture.