From
When Hard Books Disappear:
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The same guy who has been backing up the internet (yes the entire web!), and is racing Google to scan all books into digital files, has recently become concerned about the lack of a physical archive for all these digitized books. That guy is Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive. Brewster noticed that Google and Amazon and other countries scanning books would cut non-rare books open to scan them, or toss them out after scanning. He felt this destruction was dangerous for the culture.
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I don't know what to make of this. Storing stuff long term in warehouses works if the funding is there. For example, samples of the 1918 flu were warehoused by the US Armed Forces for 80+ years. Physical books can last for centuries, and the typical digital media is only designed to last for about 10 years. However, the Internet allows for many digital copies and digital archiving is also safe if the files are periodically migrated to new media.