what happened to the great book scanning?

     If you look for books to read online because what you want is out of print and hard to find, you may find an old book that someone has re-typed, apparently to preserve it in cyberspace--like a weird bit of Farenheit 451. Now that we can scan a book, instead of re-typing it, other people are still arguing about whether we ought to scan the old books at all. Let's scan them, and worry about what to do with them later. Finding an old book online is still too much like potluck. By now the internet could have made all of the rare library and museum collections of the Earth available to everyone--and it hasn't come close. Even if the old books are never made available to the public, and there is no reason why they shouldn't be, the books would be preserved from decay or being accidentally discarded. Anyone who handles old books, or who might handle old books, should be encouraged to scan them. I have yet to see such a message, sent by anyone. Perhaps internet service providers could offer a premium of some kind for the first scan of an out-of-print book.