The emergence of digital reformatting in the history of preservation knowledge: 1823–2015
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2021-0080 |
| Published date | 25 January 2022 |
| Date | 25 January 2022 |
| Pages | 1249-1277 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Zack Lischer-Katz |
The emergence of digital
reformatting in the history of
preservation knowledge:
1823–2015
Zack Lischer-Katz
The University of Arizona School of Information, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to understand the emergence of digital reformatting as a technique for
preserving information within the cultural heritage preservation community by reviewing historical trends in
modern preservation research.
Design/methodology/approach –This paper analyzes secondary sources, reviews and historical texts to
identify trends in the intellectual and technological histories of preservation research, beginning with the first
applications of the scientific method to combating book decay in the early nineteenth to the emergence of
digitization techniques in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Findings –This paper identifies five major historical periods in the development of preservation knowledge:
the early experimental era; era of microfilm experimentation; era of professionalization; era of digital library
research; and the era of digital reformatting and mass digitization; and identifies three major trends in its
development: empirical inquiry, standardization and centralization.
Research limitations/implications –Findings reflect broad trends in the field of preservation, primarily in
a United States context and are limited to the modern era of preservation research.
Practical implications –This paper’s broad historical overview provides a reference for preservation
professionals and students in library science or archives programs. Identifying historical trends enables
practitioners to critically examine their own preservation techniques and make better decisions when adopting
and using new preservation technologies.
Originality/value –This paper provides a unique perspective on the history of preservation knowledge that
synthesizes existing historical research in order to identify periods and trends that enable a clearer
understanding of digital reformatting in its historical emergence.
Keywords Digitization, Preservation, Access, Information history, Standards, Archives, Libraries, Museums,
Professional knowledge
Paper type Research paper
As physical configurations of matter in the world, every medium is in a state of continuous
decay. To preserve access to information resources, institutions configure technologies and
practices to either conserve physical materials and slow their inevitable decay or copy the
information they contain to new carriers. Digital reformatting, the digitization of cultural
heritage collections for preservation purposes, has radically altered how institutions
preserve, organize and make accessible their information resources. It expands access to
collections consisting of a wide range of analog formats—including manuscripts, printed
texts, maps, photographs, multimedia recordings and motion picture films—enabling new
ways of interacting with these materials through expanded search capabilities, annotation,
computational methods of analysis and other techniques for working with digital materials.
At the same time, digital reformatting is increasingly understood by information studies
researchers as a cultural practice of translation between representational systems, rather
than a seamless and unproblematic transmission of encoded signals from one carrier to
another. Digital reformatting, as a socially constructed preservation practice, has a history
embedded within broader intellectual trends in the field of preservation.
The emergence
of digital
reformatting
1249
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 13 April 2021
Revised 31 December 2021
Accepted 2 January 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 6, 2022
pp. 1249-1277
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-04-2021-0080
Digitization is a form of copying that translates information stored in analog form into
digital formats. In order for digitization to be accepted into existing practices of cultural
heritage institutions, it first had to be constructed in ways that would enable it to fit with
existing preservation knowledge, concepts and terminology. To that end, in June 2004, the
Association of Research Libraries (ARL) issued a report titled, Recognizing Digitization as a
Preservation Reformatting Method, which officially endorsed digitization as a preservation
strategy for library materials. Framing digitization as a “preservation reformatting method”
aligned digitization techniques with earlier paradigms of copying in libraries, such as
microfilm reformatting. The use of terminology that was already familiar to information
professionals constructed the idea of digitization as a reasonable and responsible approach
for preserving library materials in a way that appeared as an extension of existing strategies.
Debate about digitization as a preservation strategy for analog originals has continued as its
risks and limitations have become apparent. For example, Conway (2013) has shown in his
analysis of digitized books in the Google Books collection that digitization can embed
significant quantities of errors in their digitally encoded pages. Concerns over the quality of
copies produced through digital reformatting programs in libraries and archives have
encouraged institutions to develop standards and best practices documents to help guide and
legitimize their digitization activities. Efforts to standardize practices and products of
digitization is part of a broader trend in the modernist project to enact control and produce
sameness over space and time (Timmermans and Epstein, 2010;Lampland and Star, 2009).
At the same time, information studies researchers are considering the ways in which the
practices of preservationists and the technologies they choose to use shape the resulting
digital copies and how they can be interpreted into the future. For instance, Mak (2014) has
traced changes in the meaning of digitized texts as they are reformatted from paper to
microfilm to digital files stored in a database, finding that each act of copying embeds traces
of its cultural and historical context. Conway (2015) has pointed to the possibility of looking at
digitized collections as documents in themselves that provide evidence of the digitization
projects and the cultural and historical contexts that produced them. Digitization is never
merely a direct transmission of signals between formats but is perhaps better understood as a
process of translation between two media formats constituted by fundamentally different
representational systems [1]. The production of digital copies can be disastrous if one ignores
the process of translation and assumes that this is purely a form of information transfer
between media, unproblematic, simple and technically perfect. Considering digital
reformatting as a risky process of translation instead of as a neutral transmission draws
attention to the particular historical context and the epistemological and cultural biases that
become embedded in the discourses and practices of the technology. From this perspective,
the act of digitization is shaped by the materiality of the media formats involved, their
corresponding affordances and means of encoding, as well as by the historical and cultural
discourses that shape their development and use.
This paper examines the historical emergence of digital reformatting, situating it within
the history of preservation knowledge primarily in a US context in order to better understand
the intellectual, institutional and professional trends that have shaped it. It integrates and
synthesizes existing research in preservation history, beginning with studies that look at
early research on the decay of physical materials in the early nineteenth century, and
concluding with the emergence of digital reformatting at the turn of the twenty-first century.
This paper provides insight into how trends in the development of preservation knowledge
have shaped the work of cultural heritage institutions, and by extension, transformed analog
collections through practices of copying. It argues that considering these trends opens up
new avenues of research, in particular, it draws attention to preservation standards as
important carriers of knowledge (Scott, 2003) that control and coordinate institutional
activities and shape how knowledge circulates in the field of preservation. Preservation
JD
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