[jrumbut]

> we can digitize them

We can, but will we? And will we maintain those collections?

There is some resilience in having collections scattered here, there, and everywhere in addition to having a substantial chunk of history reliant on one charity that is constantly under threat due to copyright law.

History suggests that at some point the Internet Archive will be lost.

Additionally, a digital copy doesn't preserve the physical artifact. The ink, paper, and glue contains information about trade, printing technology, and perhaps the environment as well. We don't know what questions people will ask in the future.

[ajsnigrutin]

Sure, shit will happen, but it's much easier to preserve digital media than it is for physical media, especially when shit happens. Disk space is cheaper and cheaper while physical space is getting more and more expensive for the most of us. Also, physical media can't be duplicated (noone will actually print out copies of those old magazines, and even if they did, it wouldn't be the same).

I know you lose the experience of paper, but that experience is limited to the few that have the actual copies. Digital is available to everyone. I see more issues with more modern media, where eg. videogames cannot be played at all anymore, due to always-online drm and requiring backend servers that the publishers are shutting down (so even pirate cracks cannot help). For comparison, you can fit the whole NES and SNES library on a usb stick with space left over.