jon said:
>   If the purpose of scans is for multiple use cases (and not only OCR),
>   then it appears wise to scan text at 600 dpi, preferably 24-bit full color

except over at d.p., their reason for scanning is to do o.c.r., for proofing.

but perhaps other projects, like million-books or internet-archive,
would find your position persuasive.  or maybe not.


>   Of course, the huge downside to higher-rez,
>   higher-color-depth images are much greater file sizes.
>   This causes difficulty with online archival storage and transport.

that's only one huge downside.
another huge downside is that
scanning takes _much_ longer.
indeed, i would say that _that_
would be their primary objection.

most d.p. scanning people are
processing lots and lots of books,
and do not have the time to spare
to create scans at a resolution that
is far higher than what they require
to do the job that they set out to do.

as always, it has everything to do with
the cost-benefit ratio.  you can rave
all you want about the benefit, but
if people don't want to pay the cost...

-bowerbird