SALVAGING DAMAGED TEXT Público Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 33, August 12, 2001, Article 12
SALVAGING DAMAGED TEXT
Steve Pellegrini writes: "I'd like to make a comment regarding
the fate of the Davenport library. It was sad enough that most
of it had been damaged and that so little was at the time
salvageable. Today, however, the state of computer driven
'textual forensics' and the scanning and light spectrum filtering
is even now almost magically able to restore readable text from
congealed globs of soaked pages. Eventually this technology
will be advanced enough to make saving the text of even minor
works like auction catalogues worth the small investment in time
and money.As we all know old catalogues are invaluable in discovering
the tiny factoid of attribution, provenance or variety on which
the success of a project may hinge. My point is that today it is
better to find an obscure dark, dry spot to store these boxes
of rotting catalogues than to toss them into the abyss of the
local dump. To some yet unborn researcher using tomorrow's
tools an old box of trashed catalogues may prove to be the
numismatic Dead Sea Scrolls."- 2001-08-12
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