'A Good Enough Fix': Repair and Maintenance in Librarians' Digitization Practice

This is the registered version of the entry “‘A Good Enough Fix’: Repair and Maintenance in Librarians’ Digitization Practice”  published 26-09-2018 at https://moritzfuerst.net/x/18a6ag7

The chapter examines how librarians deal with the unavoidable decay of archived and to-be-archived books in the context of a large-scale digitization project. The librarians’ professional repair and maintenance work is specified by the complex nature of the books and the ‘double bind’ of their routine treatment. At the same time, they are to be preserved as jewels of cultural heritage and national identity and to be made available to interested visitors. The text focuses on the digitization process disclosing a tension between preservation and availability in the multiple enactments of documentary heritage artifacts. Through ‘shadowing’ librarians at work, I explore librarians’ distinctive care and professional vision, as well as their local inquiries into book properties, material and digital.