[dredmorbius]

"It looks like somebody just got hungry and took a bite out of it," says Haber. He has positioned the record on a turntable and fitted the broken piece back into place, like it's a jigsaw puzzle. "If we spun this thing fast, the piece would come flying off, you know, and maybe hit somebody," he says.

Paragraph 2 of the link.

[caseysoftware]

In that particular case, definitely. More generally, it's risk.

Every time an archivist touches the media - no matter gloves, a clean environment, the care applied, etc - there's a risk of altering or even damaging it. In our case, the eventual goal was to keep the ever-deteriorating originals in nitrogen-filled vaults.

Therefore, if you can avoid having to touch it often (or ever), then you've managed to protect it better, probably longer, and more cheaply.

[dredmorbius]

Right.

Static, high-resolution photography (or other imaging) is about the least-invasive, lowest-risk options available.