Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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throughout this review, i.e., of how textual criticism needs to move beyond attempts to perfectly
reconstruct the “orig<strong>in</strong>al” text of an author by correct<strong>in</strong>g the “errors” of scribes found <strong>in</strong> manuscripts
(Bolter 1991, Dué and Ebbott 2009). “It is clear after centuries of study<strong>in</strong>g the processes by which
manuscripts are transmitted,” Cayless argued, “that precise, mechanical copy<strong>in</strong>g was not typically the
<strong>in</strong>tent of those mak<strong>in</strong>g new editions of classical works” (Cayless 2010b, 144). Cayless stated that the
methods of textual criticism would need to be adapted even further <strong>in</strong> terms of digital copies and their
derivative formats.
Another press<strong>in</strong>g issue identified by Cayless was that current digital rights management schemes rarely
work well with digital preservation goals, for successful preservation requires the ability to distribute
and migrate copies. 701 Cayless observed that Creative Commons licenses were one k<strong>in</strong>d of license that
dealt with vary<strong>in</strong>g levels of reuse or mashups. While not<strong>in</strong>g that one major frequently stated concern
regard<strong>in</strong>g shar<strong>in</strong>g or mak<strong>in</strong>g reuse available was that it would reduce an author’s ability to profit from
his or her own work, he also reported that some authors had stated that they had made more money by
mak<strong>in</strong>g at least part of their work freely available onl<strong>in</strong>e. Cayless concluded that s<strong>in</strong>ce mak<strong>in</strong>g more of
a work freely available <strong>in</strong>creases the likelihood of it be<strong>in</strong>g quoted and reused, it also enhances its
chances of be<strong>in</strong>g preserved:
It seems therefore reasonable to argue that we have returned to a situation somewhat like the
one that existed <strong>in</strong> the ancient world and, furthermore, that perhaps some of the processes that
governed the survival of ancient works might perta<strong>in</strong> to digital media. As <strong>in</strong> ancient times, a
work released <strong>in</strong>to the electronic environment may be copied, quoted, reused, or resold without
the orig<strong>in</strong>ator’s hav<strong>in</strong>g much control over what happens to it. There are legal frameworks for
controll<strong>in</strong>g what happens to copies of a work, but <strong>in</strong> practice they may be hard to apply or may
not be worth the trouble. Some works may be licensed <strong>in</strong> such a way that there are no legal
barriers to such treatment. What we have seen from the limited survey of ancient works above
is that copy<strong>in</strong>g often provides the most promis<strong>in</strong>g avenue for long-term survival (Cayless
2010b, 147).
While copy<strong>in</strong>g does tend to reflect the motivations of the current culture and is not without its
complications, Cayless also po<strong>in</strong>ted out that without copy<strong>in</strong>g, none of the texts of Sappho would have
survived.
Another digital preservation issue that Cayless felt was misguided was a focus on preserv<strong>in</strong>g the “user
experience,” which he felt was typically def<strong>in</strong>ed as the appearance of the text on the page. “Modern
pr<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g methods are completely unsuited to represent<strong>in</strong>g the appearance of ancient texts,” Cayless
<strong>in</strong>sisted, add<strong>in</strong>g as well “it wouldn’t be possible to pr<strong>in</strong>t a scroll on a modern laser pr<strong>in</strong>ter without
destroy<strong>in</strong>g its form. But there is absolutely no guarantee that the current standard form will be the
dom<strong>in</strong>ant one <strong>in</strong> a hundred years” (Cayless 2010b, 147). This concentration on the “user experience,”
Cayless proposed, had resulted <strong>in</strong> an emphasis on technology rather than content. For the long-term
preservation of content, Cayless suggested the use of text-based markup technologies such as XML
rather than document formats such as PDF:
Text-based markup technologies, on the other hand, such as XML, allow for the presentation of
documents to be abstracted out to a separate set of <strong>in</strong>structions. Instead of the document be<strong>in</strong>g
701 This po<strong>in</strong>t was also made earlier by Kansa et al. (2007), and Cayless cites the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) program based at Stanford
University (http://lockss.stanford.edu/lockss/Home), which <strong>in</strong>cludes an “open source, peer-to-peer, decentralized digital preservation <strong>in</strong>frastructure” as one
model to be considered.