Future Trends: Digitization of Books, Old and New

I researched the current trend of digitization of books by Google. It is a massive effort to place all books from all time in digital form. Google wants to make available these books and selections in full image format for the public domain. Public accessibility is the primary goal. Also, the effort is intended to preserve material indefinitely. Google wants everybody with a computer to be able to have online access and search capabilities to all books that exist. This is quite an undertaking, and it is not without its hiccups, bumps, restrictions and legal battles. Aside from these virtual stalling tactics, what are the long-term implications for the former keepers of books, the libraries? What are the benefits of such a program? And, more importantly, does this effort reflect a future trend toward digitizing all information that exists other than books, such as photographs, artwork and deteriorating manuscripts? Lastly, is this future trend the demise of the “hard copy”—the actual print version of information?
My paper ended up being 8 pages long, so if you'd like to view it in full, I have placed it in the class dropbox. It is a super-interesting subject matter, and I hope you enjoy it.