I just downloaded a copy of the scanned version of American Bibliopolist, a monthly literary register and repository of notes and queries, dated 1873. I considered this a good find – I am at the moment writing a small book concerned with printing.
The book has supposedly been carefully scanned. However pretty soon you notice that many pages are very hard to read. They remind me of my university days of hurriedly scanning a book only to notice later that many pages were missing all the words on the outside margin, that the words running into the gutter had turned to black streaks.
I was just wondering how the future will look if we depend on archives of scanned books of which are missing much of their contents due to our sloppy scanning. I guess its going to be ah what the heck lets just ignore this old stuff. Sad really.
I just had to rant a little… sorry