As research libraries move toward making portions of their physical collections available in an online format, the role of the object has been somewhat overlooked. For several years, as digital collections developed in research libraries, it was often a foregone conclusion that digital surrogates would, in many cases, supercede the need for consultation with original objects. The advantages of the digital image over traditional forms of reformatting and, in some cases, the original item are numerous. The possibility of remote access, the opportunity of enlarging and zooming in, the capability of recovering lost information through manipulation all make digital collections highly useful and valuable to the scholarly community. Such advantages led many in academic communities to assume digital surrogates would make the use of the original object superfluous.

Interestingly though, the opposite effect has been perceived. In a 2001 publication on digitization strategies, Smith reported that some librarians felt digitizing certain collections had increased the use of the physical objects. There were no statistics, however, to support this assertion. In addition, there were no explanations offered for the reason behind this relationship.