Alexandria 2.0

Article from Wired.com regarding the creation of "Alexandria 2.0", that is, the Internet Archive project. Brewster Kahle explains how he copies rare and out of print books for preservation.

Lead paragraph:

Here’s the problem with libraries. They catch on fire really easily. As such, they were the prized targets of the invading hordes of antiquity – the model collections of knowledge of their times, whose only fault was their inherent flammability. They were one-man, one-torch jobs. But the hordes didn’t prize the library only for how powerfully it burned. Back in those days, if you wanted to kill a culture, you killed its library. All it took was one chucklehead with a flaming stick to annihilate thousands of years of accumulated knowledge. And it happened often. (cont)