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.