9 - Collections and Preservations

Abstract

The actual possession of books and other collections is less important than it has been in the past. Since digital items may be transmitted almost instantaneously across even international distances, what matters in the digital age is not what the library has but what it can get quickly. For many items, a digital version will be a substitute for the original and will be all that the user needs. For other areas, the digital version is only used to find items that the user would look at in original form. For the typical printed book, in which the author wrote words but the book design and page layout were done by designers and compositors at the publisher or printer, it is not critical for the readers to see the original form. If digital versions can achieve the same readability and usability, the readers may switch to a digital format. For works such as paintings, drawing, and some poetry, the original author does control the actual appearance that the viewer sees. Scholars often demand to see the original of these works, especially those who study brushwork or other details of creation. With books, those few users who study typography, papermaking, or binding must view original copies, but they are a small fraction of library users. With time and better displays, computer surrogates are becoming more and more acceptable even for limited aspects of artwork or manuscript study, if only to select the items to be sought for examination. Even today, though, the overwhelming majority of library usage is from printed books for which digital substitutes can be used, and for which a digital display is preferable to the alternative of microfilm for fragile items.