Gale's 18th Century Collection digitization project

This just came across in my mail. Another very large digitzation
project of texts available for a fee.

Columbia University has purchased the entire collection of Gale's 18th
Century Collections Online, a digital content pool of 150,000 rare
English-language and foreign-language books and papers published in
Great Britain during the 18th century. The Collection is said to
be the single most ambitious digitization project ever undertaken.
John L. Tofanelli, Anglo-American Bibliographer at Columbia's Butler
Library, said, "This will change the way people think about the 18th
Century and how they write about it. It allows scholars and
researchers to delve deeper than ever before into this key period in
world history." Nearly 150,000 rare titles published between 1701 and
1800 are now available online, in a single integrated search
environment. Gale is an information publisher and a unit of the
Thompson Corp.

For more information, visit: http://www.gale.com

I wonder what this portends for the volumes which were digitized?

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"It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues
as "slightly foxed", although it would be more honest to admit
that it looked as though it had beed badgered, wolved and
possibly beared as well."

_Light Fantastic_
Terry Pratchett