I interviewed Brewster Kahle who runs the Internet Archive, which he envisions as the digital equivalent of the fabled library of Alexandria (...) According to Kahle there are roughly 26 million books in the library of congress, the largest print library in the world. This may seem like a lot of books, but in the digital age it doesn’t represent that many data. On the web, for example, an equivalent amount of information as is printed in that amount of books is posted online every two months.
When you consider that at the moment it takes one person a year to scan 3000 books, it means that all 26 million titles can be scanned by the population of Detroit in the course of one long weekend. In terms of computer storage the entire content of a book on average takes up only one megabyte. Twenty six million megabytes translates into 26 terabytes, which can be stored in a box that comfortably fits on one small shelf.
Even if Brewster was off by a few million, the point is that in computer terms this order of data can be considered minimal, and - issues of preservation aside - it is fair to assume that the digital liberation of all this content is near.
My information comes from the source mentioned below (see SpaceCollective's Grand Narrative):
Even if Brewster was off by a few million, the point is that in computer terms this order of data can be considered minimal, and - issues of preservation aside - it is fair to assume that the digital liberation of all this content is near.