nov08b.indd


Paul Conway 

Tec(h)tonics
Reimagining preservation 

Ed. note: Remarks delivered on the occa­
sion of the 35th anniversary of the Northeast 
Document Conservation Center in Andover, 
Massachusetts, April 4, 2008. 

These are times of extraordinary contrast for preservation—where affection for 
artifacts rare and common competes with a 
near fetish for the digital. In the span of only 
a few weeks, we hear news of the rescue 
and restoration of an optically based sound 
recording that predates Edison by nearly 30 
years. We see the possible sale of a photogenic 
print of a leaf that predates Henry Fox Talbot’s 
first photograph by 50 years. We read in the 
New Yorker about the impending death of the 
newspaper as we know it. The demise of 35 
mm microfilm and consumer roll film is not 
far behind, as is the compact disc format for 
music, which will go the way of reel­to­reel 
tape and VHS video as obsolete but ubiquitous 
media. And then we learn, too, that the Univer­
sity of Michigan has completed the digitization 
of its 1 millionth book on the way to digitiz­
ing 7 million volumes in one of the largest 
research libraries in the United States—some 
2.1 billion page images when the job is done 
a few years hence. So we are acutely aware 
that preservation as we know it is in a state 
of flux, confronting profound challenges and 
opportunities in the face of mass digitization 
of our cultural heritage. 

A new defi nition 
Eighteen months ago, the Oxford English 
Dictionary proposed a new definition for the 
adjective “tectonic: of a change: momentous, 
utter, vast; chiefly in tectonic shift.” Tectonic 
shift seems to have replaced “paradigm shift” 
as a trendy term applied to everything from 

economics to sports. Of course we all rec­
ognize the word from high school geology 
as the massive plates of the earth’s crust that 
shift slowly over eons, pushing up mountain 
ranges and deepening the ocean’s valleys – or 
quite suddenly at the fault lines. The Greek 
origin of the word—“tectonicus: of or pertain­
ing to building, or construction in general; 
used especially in reference to architecture 
and kindred arts”—opens an opportunity to 
reconsider the implications of building large 
scale digital collections. By inserting (h) in 
this three­pronged term, we draw attention 
to the technological horns of our dilemma 
—technology as a potent threat to the core 
principles of our profession versus technol­
ogy as an alluring tonic—one that complicates 
our sense of what is doable and achievable 
in our professional practice. Whichever view 
you adopt, the choices are not easy and the 
outcomes of the choice are far less certain 
than in the past. 

The dilemma is most pointedly exposed in 
the face of the wholesale digitization of our 
cultural heritage. We see the very real prospect 
that a huge portion of the world’s books and 
a very significant amount of the paper­based 
special collections held by prestigious research 
institutions will be transformed into digital 
form and will be used almost exclusively that 
way for any number of purposes. Even though 
the future of the vast quantities of audiovisual 
resources from the 20th century does not seem 
as promising, we shall still witness a signifi cant 
shift to digital delivery over the next decade. 
What is not digital will not exist, or may not 

Paul Conway is associate professor at the University of 
Michigan, e-mail: pconway@umich.edu 
© 2008 Paul Conway 

C&RL News November 2008  598 

mailto:pconway@umich.edu


matter, much, except for the sentimental, sym­
bolic qualities of the artifact—culture under 
glass, representational and stilled. 

Massive digitization 
It is important to note that the notion of 
“mass digitization” does not just apply to 
the supersized transformations that we see 
with the Google Books project, the Open 
Content Alliance, and similar programs. Mass 
digitization also refers to “production­oriented” 
digitization that requires careful workfl ow 
planning and likely outsourcing to vendors. 
Most important, mass digitization is an at­
titude that favors digital transformation and 
delivery, an approach that is programmatic 
and outgoing, and a commitment that results 
in the marshaling of significant resources to 
keep momentum going for the foreseeable 
future. In these senses, mass digitization is 
cumulatively a large scale undertaking and 
“digitization for the masses.” 

The preservation community itself laid the 
groundwork for massive digitization through 
decades of experiments that defi ned best 
practices.1 Somewhat controversial policy 
statements have opened the door to digitiza­
tion as a preservation strategy.2 

Within the past two years, the attention of 
the preservation community has turned quite 
sharply to the implications of digitization 
within the cultural heritage community gener­
ally and for preservation practices in particular. 
Some recent examples: 

• A symposium at the University of Michi­
gan (UM) was the first to examine the impli­
cations of the Google Books project. Among 
its nine recommendations are three that call 
for focused attention to quality (especially of 
full­text derived from OCR processing), the 
revision of standards, and the assessment of 
value to users.3 

• Trudi Hahn was one of the presenters at 
the UM symposium and the person perhaps 
most focused at the time on the implications 
of the project for the preservation profession. 
In her recently published presentation, she 
is fairly critical of the power that corporate 
sponsors have wielded over the terms of the 

projects and urges preservation professionals 
to exercise more leadership.4 

• The preconference symposium last year 
at the Society of American Archivists annual 
meeting urged us to go with the fl ow, focus­
ing on quantity rather than quality. “We must 
stop our slavish devotion to detail,” the report 
on the symposium screams. “The perfect has 
become the enemy of the possible.”5 

• The Council on Library and Informa­
tion Resources (CLIR) is also looking at mass 
digitization activities. With the support of 
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CLIR is 
engaging scholars in a five­part plan to assess 
large­scale book digitization projects and make 
recommendations to improve the usefulness of 
the products.6 At this point, we can only hope 
that the scholars are more pointedly effective 
in their conclusions than when they were 
asked 15 years ago to advise the preservation 
community on selection issues.7 

• CLIR has just released its description and 
assessment of four major book digitization 
projects. Oya Rieger’s report makes 13 recom­
mendations across the spectrum of preserva­
tion and access issues. The report’s greatest 
strength is its analysis framework that allows 
us to look at these projects through our well­
polished lens of preservation ethics. Moving 
ahead on the recommendations themselves 
deserves significant commitment from the 
preservation community.8 

My most serious concern with these and 
other commentaries on mass digitization is 
the rush to rewrite the rules on digitization 
quality (imaging, metadata, and interface) 
without understanding how and why best 
practices emerged, how best practices have 
been applied, and what impact our work has 
had and is having on users. 

Should the preservation community sup­
port the lowering of the quality bar when 
there is no evidence that doing so is either 
cost effective or a benefit to end users? I do 
not think so. Should the nascent conversations 
about defining new technologies for preser­
vation digitization occupy much of our time 
when the rest of the world is only concerned 
about access? Perhaps, but only for “last use” 

November 2008  599 C&RL News 



reformatting. Instead, we need to devote our 
energies and our resources to maximizing the 
likelihood that digitization programs going 
forward produce the most useful and usable 
digital collections possible. For it is through 
increasing the amount and significance of the 
use of digital collections that preservation will 
be guaranteed. In this regard, the socioeco­
nomic challenges far outweigh the signifi cant 
technological ones. 

Mitigating factors for preservation 
leadership 
That said, it is going to be very diffi cult for 
practicing preservation professionals to exert 
an influence over either the processes or the 
products of mass digitization unless they come 
to terms with three very important limiting 
factors. 

• The first of these factors is what I’ll call 
“The Tyranny of the Local.” This factor rein­
forces the notion that the needs and priorities 
of individual organizations and specifi c collec­
tions are sufficiently unique that few national or 
international standards can be either developed 
or applied. The Tyranny of the Local has played 
out over two decades in regard to selection for 
digitization, digital imaging guidelines, workfl ow 
processes, cataloging and metadata procedures, 
and nearly every other aspect of digitization 
projects. The net result of thinking globally but 
acting locally is the near complete absence of 
a conscious consensus on digitization policies 
and, more troubling, the sense that such a con­
sensus is impossible. 

We have to do something about this—be­
ginning with the recognition that professional 
compromise toward a higher community 
standard rather than a lower bar is an ethical 
necessity. 

• The second limiting factor I’ll label 
“Proxy Behavior.” This factor takes the form of 
preservation librarians, archivists, and curators 
thinking and acting on behalf of users without 
engaging them directly and persistently in the 
design, development, and delivery of digital 
products. For the preservation community, the 
net result of Proxy Behavior is a too­large gap 
between preservation actions (and the deci­

sions behind these actions) and the impact of 
these actions on end users. 

We have to do something about this—be­
ginning with the formation of strategic alli­
ances with communities of active and creative 
users of digital products in recognition that the 
ethics of preservation center more profoundly 
on the impact of preservation on society than 
on the materials we handle. 

• The third factor limiting the engagement 
of the preservation community with the mass 
digitization movement I’ll call “Surrogate Arti­
fact.” This issue is driven in part by stubborn 
insistence that digitization is primarily, if not 
exclusively, the digital copying of original 
sources to some specified level of “faithful­
ness.” When, in truth, as we are seeing in 
emerging large­scale digital libraries, digitiza­
tion is the creation of new products that have 
significant artifact values worth preserving. 

We have to do something about this—be­
ginning with getting over our fear of loss—loss 
of professional identity, loss of tradition, and 
even loss of information over time. Digital 
product development has an important pres­
ervation component. Building preservation 
issues into digital products is prudent risk 
management. We might have to recognize 
that we can reduce our investments in book 
treatment and help our organizations begin 
triaging our audiovisual heritage aggressively 
so that we can marshal resources to make a 
difference in the mass digitization arena. 

What the preservation community needs in 
the face of the unambiguous tec(h)tonic shift 
to the digital is: 

• a loud and clear voice of consensus on 
digitization standards, forged in principled 
compromise; 

• an enthusiastic re­embrace of technologi­
cal R&D designed primarily to reinforce that 
consensus; and 

• a focus on preserving the signifi cant arti­
factual values embedded in digital products. 

Final thoughts 
This is actually the way preservation used 
to be before digitization assumed the prior­
ity that it now holds in the nation’s cultural 

C&RL News November 2008  600 



organizations. Modern preservation programs 
emerged from decades of sophisticated work 
to diagnose the technical source of preserva­
tion problems, find a set of commonly accept­
able solutions, train practicing professionals, 
and catalyze national leadership. Until the new 
digital boom, a spirit of collaboration to defi ne 
the shared elements of preservation action 
effectively transcended local preferences and 
motivated aggressive national action that we 
do not see enough of today. 

The context of massive digitization allows 
us to re­imagine preservation as the value 
that motivates the construction of high­quality 
digital products. The ethicist Raphael Capurro 
includes preservation in his tight framework of 
moral rights in the new technological environ­
ment, arguing that a basic moral principle “is to 
share knowledge, or the right to communicate 
in a digital environment, which includes the 
right to preserve what we communicate for fu­
ture generations.”9 By associating preservation 
with the continuum of communication from 
past to future, we know that digitization is not 
just a technological but also but a culturally 
bounded endeavor. 

Notes 
1. National Archives and Records Ad­

ministration, NARA Guidelines for Digitiz­
ing Archival Materials for Electronic Access 
(Washington, D.C.: NARA, 2004), www. 
archives.gov/research/arc/digitizing­archival 
­materials.html. 

2. Kathleen Arthur, et al., “Recognizing Digi­
tization as a Preservation Reformatting Strategy,” 
Adopted as policy by the Association of Re­
search Libraries, October 2004, www.arl.org. 

3. “Mass Digitization: Implications for Infor­
mation Policy,” report from “Scholarship and 
Libraries in Transition: A Dialogue about the 
Impacts of Mass Digitization Projects,” Sympo­
sium held on March 10–11, 2006, University of 
Michigan­Ann Arbor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
National Commission on Libraries and Informa­
tion Science, 2006), www.nclis.gov/digitization 
/MassDigitizationSymposium­Report.pdf. 

4. Trudi Bellardo Hahn, “Mass Digitization: 
Implication for Preserving the Scholarly Re­

cord,” Library Resources & Technical Services 
52 (January 2008): 18–26. 

5. Ricky Erway and Jennifer Schaffner, 
Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get Into the 
Flow (Dublin: OCLC Programs and Research, 
2007), www.oclc.org/programs/publications 
/reports/2007­02.pdf. 

6. Council on Library and Information 
Resources. “When mass digitization reaches 
critical mass: Scholars’ evaluation and analy­
sis of major digitization projects,” www.clir. 
org/activities/details/scholeval.html. 

7. Gerald George, “Difficult Choices: How 
Can Scholars Help Save Endangered Research 
Resources?” (Washington, D.C.: Council on 
Library and Information Resources, 1995). 

8. Oya Rieger, “Preservation in the Era of 
Large­Scale Digitization” (Washington, D.C.: 
CLIR, 2008), www.clir.org/activities/details 
/mdpres.html. 

9. Raphael Capurro, “Towards an Ontologi­
cal Foundation of Information Ethics,” Ethics 
and Information Technology 8, 2, (2006): 
175–86. 

November 2008  601 C&RL News 

www.clir.org/activities/details
www.clir
www.oclc.org/programs/publications
www.nclis.gov/digitization
http:www.arl.org