Over the summer, we completed the monumental task of digitizing over 90 years of the student newspaper at Kent State. In the last batch of materials that were ingested (1926-1939), we had to make a decision whether to send out the originals- slim, bound volumes- or, to scan from microfilm. All of the previous scanning had been done from the print. We send the full volumes out to our vendor ( Backstage Library Works ), who disbinds the content before scanning (Note: this is from our second copy, for anyone who is curious! I also love that the disbinding machine is called the guillotine). These early volumes were more problematic however, so our team talked about other options. As we looked at the early years, the newspaper had become extremely brittle, so much that even turning the pages to review the volumes was a little harrowing. We had to really tackle the potential problems for the scanning vendor before we decided whether to send these out. The level of brittleness in these ear