POST: Questions to Ask When You Learn of Digitization Projects

Sarah Werner highlights some of the thornier issues around access to digital collections in a recent blog post, “Questions to Ask When You Learn of Digitization Projects.” As news reports of increased access to historical materials make the rounds, Werner reminds us to interrogate the motives behind projects, noting the challenges of balancing the often competing interests of researchers and (frequently) commercial enterprises:

What are the ways that we—whether we work in libraries and museums as staff or as researchers—can create high quality digitizations without selling our cultural heritage to the highest bidder?

Author: Roxanne Shirazi

Roxanne is the Dissertation Research Librarian at the Graduate Center, CUNY.