In the past thirty years, the significant technical developments of digital imaging have shifted the ways that library staff produce digital collections derived from textual materials. This shift has introduced new digitization workflows, new partners, and new internal and external tensions. Those tensions, partners, and workflows present an opportunity to reconsider the role of library staff in the development of digital textual scholarship. Digitization has previously been described as a neutral, “clerical” task, devoid of “any critical or bibliographical analysis;” serving merely as a preamble to the critical and intellectual work performed by textual scholars situated in academic departments. However, this description obscures the often complex, symbiotic relationship among textual scholars and a range of library staff involved in digitization – a relationship which evolves depending upon the aims and outputs of each project. This relationship between library digitizers and textual scholars has not been analyzed to any great extent in library and information science (LIS) or digital humanities (DH) literature. To address this gap, this doctoral dissertation explores concepts drawn from library and information science and textual scholarship and uses those concepts as a framework to analyze the activities involved in library digitization and how the people who perform those activities characterize their community of practice. The dissertation also identifies the tensions and barriers faced by both library digitizers and textual scholars and how those factors affect their collaboration. Drawing on a small handful of previous studies and the empirical, ethnographic work performed for this thesis, the dissertation argues that digitization activities in libraries are quickly becoming more advanced, and that several phases can involve aspects of textual, image, and material criticism. Aside from possessing technical skills, library staff must make critical choices and judgments throughout the digitization process, from selection of materials to production, presentation, preservation, and beyond. Carefully documenting those choices and motivations provides empirical grounding for the claim that digitization is a critically informed process that can shape future collaborations and research outputs. In particular, the critical decisions surrounding the creative production of digital artifacts significantly condition their use and reuse in digital scholarship projects. As such, advanced library digitization represents a set of critical transmission activities wherein library staff can serve not only as helpmates but also as intellectual partners in the production of digital textual scholarship.

In this paper, we investigate the distinction between library digitization projects and digital scholarly editing projects by using qualitative interview data gathered from two Swedish digital scholarship ecosystems: 1) Litterarturbanken (the Swedish Literature Bank) and its collaboration with Gothenburg University Library, and 2) the internal collaboration at Uppsala University Library and the resulting digital output on the ALVIN platform. After examining the elements of digital editing practice that show up in each of these collaborations, we argue that these distinctions are blurring, and we call for a reorientation from critical versus noncritical editing towards critical transmission activities, which allows more room for less easily definable digital publishing projects to be examined. Further, we conclude that librarians, library-based textual scholars, and library technologists such as image technicians, digitization coordinators, and photographers are actively participating in the critical transmission of literary texts and the reframing of the institutionally enforced boundaries between the terms ‘librarian’ and ‘scholar.’

This article is a discussion of how digitizing and disseminating Orphan Works in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector could have the potential to significantly reframe collections across audiences and institutions in the United Kingdom and across the world. Orphan Works (those works protected by copyright and for which the copyright holder is unable to be identified or, even if identified, cannot be located) make up a significant portion of the material collections of GLAM institutions in the United Kingdom and beyond. Previous research indicates that the mission of the cultural heritage sector to provide access and create opportunities to reuse this vast array of materials is severely affected by a lack of clear copyright legislation. This article addresses two questions: 1) How is current EU Orphan Works legislation affecting the output of digitized content in the UK cultural heritage sector?; and 2) What changes can be made to the implementation of the EU Directive in the UK to better support the mission of cultural heritage institutions, including serving the research and creative communities? To answer these questions, we trace the enactment of EU Directive 2012/28/EU within the United Kingdom through the implementation of the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme (OWLS) in October 2014. We then analyze responses to a survey we conducted between December 2015 and February 2016 about the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme, and provide additional insights gained from our own use of the Scheme. We conclude that after four years, the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme has not fully addressed the long-standing Orphan Works issue for cultural heritage institutions, and that the GLAM sector is dissatisfied with the Scheme’s length of licenses and application fees. Previous research demonstrates that due diligence requirements are the major bottleneck both to mass digitization and dissemination, and we demonstrate that similar barriers remain. Our research indicates that digitization of Orphan Works and their use in the education, research, creative, cultural and commercial sectors across the UK are still stymied. We conclude by recommending that more flexible take-down notices with accompanying take-down procedures – rather than the onerous OWLS individual licensing – would enable GLAMs to digitize and disseminate Orphan Works more efficiently (although the risks to users in building upon this work would have to be clearly signposted). We suggest that updating the framework by which institutions can digitize and disseminate Orphan Works would assist a range of users and industries not only to access, but also to ‘take and make’ material based on or sourced from cultural heritage institutions.

In this paper we explore layered conceptions of access and accessibility as they relate to the theory and praxis of digital scholarly editing. To do this, we designed and disseminated a qualitative survey on five key themes: dissemination; Open Access and licensing; access to code; web accessibility; and diversity. Throughout the article we engage in cultural criticism of the discipline by sharing results from the survey, identifying how the community talks about and performs access, and pinpointing where improvements in praxis could be made. In the final section of this paper we reflect on different ways to utilize the survey results when critically designing and disseminating digital scholarly editions, propose a call to action, and identify avenues of future research.