meanwhile at the The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Museum in San Marino, California…

nbsp;http://huntingtonblogs.org/2013/02/a-lib…

“The counterintuitive result of all of these efforts,” concludes Zeidberg, “is that the more we digitize our own copies—and identify what we have to a wider audience—the more scholars want to see the originals.”

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2 Responses to meanwhile at the The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Museum in San Marino, California…

  1. lingner says:

    I’ve heard this “complaint” before, and I don’t quite see the problem. If a true scholar of Newton wants to see all six copies of “Principia Mathematica,” (and why, pray tell, didn’t they digitize all copies of what many consider one of the most important works in the history of science?), well, why shouldn’t he or she be able to? Isn’t it a good thing that more important works are being seen by more people?

  2. jennings says:

    This is the paradox of preservation. It was intended that digitization preserve the original materials by allowing scholars to peruse them on line, thus leaving the originals untouched. BUT, putting surrogates on line can actually stimulate a greater interest in seeing the originals than if they had been hidden in the archive. I agree with Tom that it is a good thing to get the works seen, but it does come with a cost.

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