On a recent researcht trip to Germany I wanted to look at some German editions and translations of English republican works from the seventeenth and eighteenth century at a university library. And for the first time in my career as an early modern historian, the Special Collections librarian asked me if it was really necessary for me to come to the reading room, since all the works I had requested had been digitised. Naturally, I was a bit taken aback, as I always thought that my job as a historian consisted in inspecting original works rather than making do with a copy wherever possible, but I could also see the librarian’s point. These items were fragile, and – for conservation purposes – she did not want to get them out unnecessarily.
So I wrote another email explaining to her why it mattered to me to see the originals nevertheless. Of course, I would be able to read the text online, I argued, but that was not the point. By looking at the originals I was hoping to gain additional insights a digitised copy might not be able to convey. I would like to see which other works the requested items were bound with, what the binding and cover looked like and whether I could draw any other conclusions concerning the use or even ownership of those works from inspecting them more closely.
Often, when I order early modern books into a reading room, I check how easily a volume opens, or if the binding feels stiff and unused, if all of the pages have been cut, or if the book easily falls open at a particular page. Sometimes, the preface is well thumbed, but the remaining pages are not, sometimes a particularly controversial section looks more worn than others. I want to feel the quality of the paper, and maybe there is a watermark on it. Sometimes, it is possible to detect marks and annotations on the pages that are not visible in the digitised copy. Sometimes a sammelband has a handwritten table of contents which is not reproduced in the digitised copy, unless a sammelband is digitised as a whole rather than its individual sections.
It also sometimes happens that one copy of a particular edition has been digitised, but not all the copies of that same edition available in the same library. So while I might be able to see a particular edition and compare it to other editions, I might not be able to compare the differences in use between different copies of the same edition or print run. There is just too much I might miss, even if the digitising institution adds a lot of contextual information.
Anyway, in the event the librarian was persuaded by my argument and let me use the original volumes in the Special Collections reading room, and I thought it was thoroughly worth it. I spent hours in there inspecting the volumes from all angles and frantically taking notes of everything that struck me as interesting. But I also felt a bit guilty for stealing the librarians’ time. They had to staff the reading room especially for me, as it was not in regular use, and I had at least three or four different colleagues taking turns to watch over me, while I worked my way through the little pile of books in different shapes, colours and sizes and stages of deterioration.
When I left, I thanked the elderly librarian who had just come in to take on the next shift to watch over me and said I would be out of his hair now. To my surprise he seemed almost disappointed that I was leaving already. There was no need for me to apologise, he said, it was people like me who kept the reading room going and made it worthwhile having. Since they had started digitising books, he complained, nobody bothered to come in any more; they already had to reduce the size of the reading room, because it had become too big and was no longer viable. He was obviously sad that things had turned out that way. So digitisation was not all good after all.
Naturally, as a historian and someone who loves old books, I can understand both sides. I don’t want rare books to suffer and fall apart because everyone wants to hold them and flick through them. But I also see the value of seeing the real thing, the materiality of a book that cannot be reproduced in digitisation – a topic my colleague Rachel Hammersley and her team have recently started exploring in some detail in an exciting research project at Newcastle University. Sometimes, looking at a book just gives you new ideas about the way it worked, what it was meant for, how it was used, and why it might have been valuable to its owner. While digitisation is a great thing, we should never lose that unique experience.
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