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book: Book Conservation and Digitization
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Book Conservation and Digitization

The Challenges of Dialogue and Collaboration
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2020

About this book

The successful transmediation of books and documents through digitization requires the synergetic partnership of many professional figures, that have what may sometimes appear as contrasting goals at heart. On one side, there are those who look after the physical objects and strive to preserve them for future generations, and on the other those involved in the digitization of the objects, the information that they contain, and the management of the digital data. These complementary activities are generally considered as separate and when the current literature addresses both fields, it does so strictly within technical reports and guidelines, concentrating on procedures and optimal workflow, standards, and technical metadata. In particular, more often than not, conservation is presented as ancillary to digitization, with the role of the conservator restricted to the preparation of items for scanning, with no input into the digital product, leading to misunderstanding and clashes of interests. Surveying a variety of projects and approaches to the challenging conservation-digitization balance and fostering a dialogue amongst practitioners, this book aims at demonstrating that a dialogue between apparently contrasting fields not only is possible, but it is in fact desirable and fruitful. Only through the synergetic collaboration of all people involved in the digitization process, conservators included, can cultural digital objects that represent more fully the original objects and their materiality be generated, encouraging and enabling new research and widening the horizons of scholarship.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Alberto Campagnolo Dr. Alberto Campagnolo (PhD, Ligatus, University of the Arts London 2015) is a trained book conservator and digital humanist. Formerly a CLIR postdoctoral fellow in Data Curation at The Library of Congress (Washington DC), he is now adjunct professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Udine, Italy

Reviews

Campagnolo’s work usefully offers a necessary grounding in the history of digitization efforts, some of the major projects that have set the current stage, and suggestions for modes of collaboration among curators, conservationists, preservationists, and other stakeholders to guide the field into the future.[...]I hope this volume will become a standard reading for students embarking on careers in cultural heritage institutions and for those embarking on their own institutional digitization projects. Likewise, I hope book historians, manuscript scholars, and other users of digital databases will take the time to read this volume, as a better understanding of the technical challenges our field faces will allow us to collaborate more fully.

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Digital platforms that provide remote access to archives and library material are becoming the norm.[...] Anyone who has been involved in the planning and execution of a digitization project, large or small, knows it to be otherwise. Therefore, the publication of Campagnolo’s book is exceptionally timely. It is a welcome reference text for all staff in an archive or library and should be widely read by those planners and decision-makers before embarking on such a project.

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[D]ecades-long efforts to digitize rare books and manuscripts have provided humanities researchers with vast resources that have enabled virtual access and opportunities for research. The timely publication of a volume of essays edited by Alberto Campagnolo provides a veritable master class in the work required to make these digital assets readily accessible online to scholars around the world.

--- Il fulcro di questo lavoro risiede proprio nella fruttuosa collaborazione tra studiosi e professionisti che operano per la conservazione e preservazione, da un lato, e fruizione dall’altro del manoscritto e del libro antico.

Topics

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    CONTENTS

    v
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    List of Illustrations

    vii
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    Introduction

    1
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  • PART ONE: BOOKS AS OBJECTS AND THEIR DIGITIZATION
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    Chapter 1. Understanding the Artifactual Value of Books

    17
    Alberto Campagnolo
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    Chapter 2. Conservation and Digitization: A Difficult Balance?

    49
    Alberto Campagnolo
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  • PART TWO: CONSERVATION AND DIGITIZATION IN PRACTICE
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    Introduction

    84
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    Chapter 3. Conservation towards Large- Scale Digitization at the Vatican Library

    89
    Ángela Núñez Gaitán
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    Chapter 4. Large- Scale Digitization at The National Archives

    97
    Catt Thompson-Baum
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    Chapter 5. British Library/ Qatar Foundation Partnership and the Digitization Project: A Case Study about Conservation Processes within Mass Digitization of Library Material

    105
    Flavio Marzo
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    Chapter 6. The Digitization of Medieval Western Manuscripts at Wellcome Collection

    117
    Stefania Signorello
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    Chapter 7. Caring for the Object during Digitization of Written Heritage: The Strategy of the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel

    127
    Almuth Corbach
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    Chapter 8. The Great Parchment Book Project

    145
    Caroline De Stefani and Philippa Smith
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    Chapter 9. The Development of the Language of Bindings Thesaurus

    157
    Athanasios Velios and Nicholas Pickwoad
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    Chapter 10. Spectral Imaging to Aid Preservation and Conservation of Cultural Heritage

    169
    Fenella G. France
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    Chapter 11. Multispectral Imaging for Special Collection Materials

    179
    Michael B. Toth
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  • PART THREE: CONSERVATORS AND DIGITIZATION EXPERTS IN DIALOGUE
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    Introduction

    196
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    Chapter 12. The Digitization of Manuscripts from the Point of View of a Book Conservator

    199
    Abigail B. Quandt
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    Chapter 13. Implementing Advanced Digital Imaging Research in Cultural Heritage: Building Relationships between Conservators and Computational Imaging Scientists

    217
    Melissa Terras
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    Chapter 14. Coda: Concluding Thoughts on Digital Surrogates

    233
    Alberto Campagnolo
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    Bibliography

    243
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    Index

    289
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 24, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9781641890540
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Illustrations:
60
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781641890540
eBook ISBN: 9781641890540
Keywords for this book
book conservation; digitization; digital humanities; multispectral imaging; cultural heritage
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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