Out of Print

The Orphans of Mass Digitization

Bibliographic Data

ID2225209
AuthorsMary Murrell (corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume58
IssueS15
PagesS149-S159
Publication date2017-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCurrent Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/688868
OpenAlexW2581778727
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited38

In the 2000s an interconnected set of elite projects in the United States sought to digitize "all books in all languages" and make them available online. These mass digitization projects were efforts to absorb the print book infrastructure into a new one centered in computer networks. Mass book digitization has now faded from view, and here I trace its setbacks through a curious figure-the "orphan"-that emerged from within these projects and acted ultimately as an agent of impasse. In legal policy debates, an "orphan" refers to a copyrighted work whose owner cannot be found, but its history, range of meanings, and deployments reveal it to be considerably more complex. Based on fieldwork conducted at a digital library engaged in mass digitization, this paper analyzes the "orphan" as a personifying metaphor that digital library activists embraced in order to challenge and/or disrupt the social relations that adhere in and around books. The figure of the orphan haunts the techno-cultural infrastructural project of mass digitization, and stands, I argue, as a disenchanted emblem for "the book" in suspension between a disfavored past and a fantasized future

Art · Business · Digitization · Elite · Emblem · Linguistics · Media studies · Metaphor · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Telecommunications · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Visual arts · Computer Science · Digital Media and Philosophy · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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