Last week, as I was ordering replacements for books missing from our shelves, I started adding up all the reasons in favor of a completely digital academic library. It's a compelling argument. Besides making it nearly impossible to lose or steal volumes, an e-collection would be accessible from home; more than one person could use the same volume at the same time; the concept of "circulation" would be obsolete, eliminating late fees; misshelving would no longer impede access; one could search millions of volumes simultaneously, either full-text or with controlled vocabulary; material for which currency is important, such as encyclopedias, could be updated by the publisher much more easily and cheaply than by printing a new edition; space constraints would become irrelevant. I like the sensory aspects of printed matter, the Word Made Flesh, but I think the docetism of e-text is destined to become the new orthodoxy.

The main problem is getting the money to scan in the current print holdings of the world's libraries, a huge undertaking.