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The E-Sylum:  Volume 4, Number 33, August 12, 2001, Article 12

SALVAGING DAMAGED TEXT 

   Steve Pellegrini writes: "I'd like to make a comment regarding 
   the fate of the Davenport library. It was sad enough that most 
   of it had been damaged and that so little was at the time 
   salvageable. Today, however, the state of computer driven 
   'textual forensics' and the scanning and light spectrum filtering 
   is even now almost magically able to restore readable text from 
   congealed globs of soaked pages.  Eventually this technology 
   will be advanced enough to make saving the text of even minor 
   works like auction catalogues worth the small investment in time 
   and money. 

   As we all know old catalogues are invaluable in discovering 
   the tiny factoid of attribution, provenance or variety on which 
   the success of a project may hinge. My point is that today it is 
   better to find an obscure dark, dry spot to store these boxes 
   of rotting catalogues than to toss them into the abyss of the 
   local dump.  To some yet unborn researcher using tomorrow's 
   tools an old box of trashed catalogues may prove to be the 
   numismatic Dead Sea Scrolls." 

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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