I think your analogy is Ok for one end of the continuum. Things like General Washington's sword or Benedict Arnolds boot... scanning and discarding makes no sense.

But if you have a copy of a newspaper that was printed in the thousands, and hundreds are already in archives, shy not scane the one in the local library and send the original out the door? (This is a question designed to foster debate, not necessarily my opinion.)

>>> [log in to unmask] 12/08/00 17:16 PM >>>
Discarding the hard copy is like shooting Enrico Caruso in the heart
after he's recorded for Thomas A. Edison. While overpopulation
demagogues will celebrate
the empty space created by the absence of Caruso's body, a couple of us
will,
no doubt, miss the original.  Some of us will mourn the original because
we loved his art, moralists will play the death penalty card, and the
technicians will report that we should have waited for digital
technology before we killed him.

Thomas W. Perrin

PS: In conservation, as in medicine, the first principle is to do no
harm.  There
are no exceptions to the rule.