Inconvenient legacy

The role of research libraries is to preserve the long-term memory of humankind. Straddling competing interests, they strive to provide unimpeded access to scholarly books while maintaining those same volumes in perpetuity. In practice, these ?Ç£bastions of knowledge?Ç¥ lean toward pragmatic maintenance solutions when dealing with the vast majority of their collections, loaning books to users in patterns antithetical to archive or museum practice. While providing a huge service, this compromise often disregards the significance of the physical material culture held by these cultural storehouses, with their own policies governing general collection repair naively shortchanging future scholars.