THE PAST’S DIGITAL PRESENCE
Saturday, Feb 20th
10:15-11:45
The Material Object in Digital Culture
Room 208
* Jane Tippett, University of Delaware, “Physicality vs Practicality: The Book as Object in the Age of Digitalization” [no abstract available]
* Heather Ball, City University of New York, “The Alternate Medieval Medium: Experiencing Medieval Manuscripts through Digital Technologies”
Digital technologies have found a use in almost every aspect of scholarly research and communication. Though the Internet proves advantageous by increasing access, it can also be detrimental to novice researchers. By solely encountering medieval manuscripts through a computer screen, users sacrifice the visceral experience that accompanies viewing the actual manuscript. Misinformation is another drawback when searching for medieval content online. How can a user discern authoritative sources from subjective and non-factual sources? One consideration that must be incorporated into further study is how digital surrogates and technologies are affecting the original manuscripts as well. If digital access increases, does access to the original become restricted? This paper will seek to answer the above questions, and provide fodder for a thorough, scholarly debate.
* Jessica Weare, Stanford University, “The Dark Tide: Digital Preservation, Interpretative Loss”
Jessica Weare’s paper “The Dark Tide: Digital Preservation, Interpretive Loss, and the Google Books Project” takes as its case study one obscure 1920s novel’s digitization for the Google Books Project. As the subject of a post-publication libel suit, the first edition of Vera Brittain’s The Dark Tide was emended with a sticker apologizing for its semi-scandalous content. During the Google Books digitization process, Stanford library’s copy of The Dark Tide was stripped of its sticker; the only extant digital copy of the text is thus an incomplete one. Weare’s paper examines what sort of preservation the Google Books project aims for, what sort of preservation literary scholars might expect, and how university libraries mediate between the two.
