Why Digital Texts Need A New Library Of Alexandria -- With Physical Books

Amidst the growing enthusiasm for digital texts -- ebooks and scans of illustrated books -- it's easy to overlook some important drawbacks. First, that you don't really own ebooks, as various unhappy experiences with Amazon's Kindle have brought home. Secondly, that a scan of an illustrated book is only as good as the scanning technology that is available when it is made: there's no way to upgrade a scan to higher quality images without rescanning the whole thing. 

On Techdirt.