
By some happenstance, during today's research I stumbled upon this visual representation of the pitfalls and benefits of book digitisation as discussed in yesterday's blog about the Wordsworth Trust Archival Symposium.
This is a clear warning sign of the importance of the time it takes to make the material digital and the custodianship required to keep texts in good archival condition. A scanned page is useful for the global audience who might access it but what use is this scan? Perhaps the movement and deconstruction of this scanned book - the partial images, blurred text and peripheral typesetting- also reveals a new form of image making and writing practice.
But what if the book in question was the last of its kind? How useful is it in the long run to allow such damage to occur?
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