3 ms·

I fail to understand why they haven't scanned all the books yet.

• caseysoftware 12y ago
  I used to work with the Library of Congress' digitization efforts, so some perspective.. I know you said books but the larger problem is that sometimes the equipment to play back the media is no longer available.. or damages/changes the media in some way. For books specifically, to get the entire "work" many scanning efforts are destructive in that you have to cut the binding of the book to get the full page.. because if there are notes in the margin, that is part of the work. For some researchers, the medium (material) of the paper itself is significant and could be useful. It can help establish age, printing process used, provenance and a variety of other aspects. If you just care about the words printed on the page, it's much easier. But that's only part of the picture. (pun intended)