But the attitudes that people hold about them can be instrumental in either mitigating or exacerbating the destructive effects of these factors. As more people come to see the importance of primary records, more use will be made of them in reading and teaching, and more constituencies will join together in the search for ways of financing artifactual preservation, storage, and access. More records will then be saved because there will be wider support for the allocation of resources to this purpose. Decisions about priorities for preservation will still have to be made, by individual as well as institutional owners of material, but those decisions will be reached in a framework that recognizes the artifactual value of every object. An appreciation of the significance of physical evidence also necessitates the adoption of standards for the creation and identification of reproductions, in order to minimize the damage done to primary records by the processes of reproduction and to maximize the usefulness of the reproductions.
Readers find themselves turning continually to reprints or reproductions of some kind.
As they welcome the benefits conferred by new technology for creating reproductions, they must remember the distinctive limitations of every form of reproduction and the continuing need for the artifactual sources on which the reproductions are based. If we approach the electronic future with these thoughts in mind, we will be more rigorous in our demands of new forms of textual presentation and more vigilant in our protection of the artifacts embodying the old forms. Both these actions are necessary to ensure the continuation of productive reading, teaching, and scholarship.