I'll admit I have a sentimental attachment to books. I spent hours in my grandfather's lap with books. I have taken books up into trees and been entertained for countless afternoons, without electricity. I have read them under my covers with a flashlight. During the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, I read by candlelight. The book: A Wrinkle in Time. :) I still don't go anywhere except the grocery store without one.

The book is also a remarkably long-lived and durable machine. Until the use of woodpulp paper became common, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, worms, water and fire were the main threats to books. (For all the fears of fire, both thermal and chemical, moisture causes more damage by causing mold.)

Though books are unwieldy, heavy and less portable than electronic storage, they don't require special equipment to read. This is their main strength, and the chief weakness of alternative data storage methods.

Microfilm and microfiche were once touted as the answer to storage and deterioration problems associated with paper. Both forms have turned out to be more fragile, just as susceptible to deterioration, and they require machines to allow the reader to read the information printed on them. Since digitalization has begun, fewer and fewer microform readers have been manufactured, and the people who know how to use them are mostly people like me.

To digitize everything is certainly good. Multiple copies in multiple formats are good insurance of survival. I'm just suspicious about durability, and about access to the ancillary equipment. And, as has been pointed out, if themarket for an item is limited, its opportunities to be converted shrink dramatically. I have some harpsichord music on vinyl that I inherited from the same grandfather who taught me to read which will probably never be converted because I can't afford to do it. Not many people might miss it, but it would be a loss.

I work with picture books an awful lot as well. Some of them have been digitized. You'd be surprised what doesn't translate well. I suppose that we're still a little early in the process, though I doubt the tactile process of sharing one of those with a child, or children, will ever be digitally reproducible.

If ever you find a book or newspaper whose original form you want to preserve that's been printed on high-acid paper, not only can you photocopy it onto alkaline paper, but you can have a little box called a microenvironment built for the item that will prevent more acid burning and photoaging, but that will begin to remove the acid from the paper. It will still be fragile, but it won't get worse. Talk to an archivist or an art preservationist.