The Digitization of Archives: In Case of Emergency or the New Normal? An Overdue Conversation with Peter Hirtle

As the COVID-19 pandemic compelled libraries and archives worldwide to close their doors indefinitely, stranded researchers were compelled to radically reimagine what a visit to the archive might look like. Rather than scrutinizing text amid the dust of decaying paper in a Special Collections Reading Room, these researchers found themselves poring over digitized documents bathed…