The Digital Arms Race

Apparently, the digital arms race is on as more and more archives race to put things online, Next Age of Discovery – WSJ.com. I am so glad to  more materials are going online; it will certainly make important collections more available to a wider range of scholars. But to what end, especially since it is only a narrow collection of things? As a cheerleader for the digital age in scholarship, I cannot help but wonder if in fact we’re not fetishizing tools of scholarly expression, and undermining good old-fashioned research.