Collecting in the twenty-first century : from museums to the web /

Outlining aspects of collecting that address the shift from analog to digital, this volume centers techniques, problems, and theories of collecting in the digital age around five themes: storage, surveillance, authenticity, knowledge, and destruction. The 12 essays and the introduction are amply annotated and richly sourced, with a handful of illustrations addressing a wide range of topics under the umbrella of "collecting." From the outsourcing of collecting through a single device containing information (in Vannevar Bush's conception of "memex" in 1945) and the construction of apocalyptic collections such as the microfilm repository of cultural heritage in Barbarastollen (near Freiburg, Germany) to the prospects around a future of collecting, the essays outline and investigate the challenges and opportunities of collecting in the digital era. Although several chapters are framed around case studies, the theoretical underpinnings, issues raised, and points made throughout the volume are useful beyond their immediate applications. They pose questions of access, data collection, ethics, and economics that will interest scholars of the history of collections, museum studies, digital humanities, library and information sciences, and related fields of literary theory and criticism and media studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals. --Juilee Decker, Rochester Institute of Technology