I thought that this week’s readings had a lot of good points. I think of myself as a traditionalist, and I used to do some research and writing for a computer security company, so both these things make me very wary of the transition from physical libraries into digitized ones. I certainly understand and appreciate the benefits of being able to share a nearly infinite amount of information with a nearly infinite number of people, but it certainly comes with a lot of costs. I believe that there should be some sort of middle ground.

I think that an effort should be made to produce text-scannable image files of all historical works, also I know this would take a long time and be very expensive. I would do so by scanning images of all the pages of the original work, then typing up all of the text, and then having the computer automatically align the typed text with the written text in the image file, and then make the typed text invisible to the reader. This way the reader could still ask the computer to search for certain words or phrases, but at the same time they could see the original handwriting and other sublte information about the document that is lost if the digital copy is text only. I understand that the monetary cost, the time needed to convert documents into such a format, and the load time are currently very great, but I think it would be worth it. The monetary cost could be offset with sponsors, and quite frankly when you want something badly enough you can usually find a way to make it happen (eg. our multi-trillion dollar war that we also can’t afford). As far as how long the project would take, I think taking a long time to do it right is better than taking a short time to do it wrong. Plus, it would go faster if more people were working on it, and goodness knows people in this country need more jobs. As far as load time, in five years I guarentee you that technology will have advanced enough that that’s no longer a problem.