That flattening business is no joke. The archives need some rules about that.

I'm somewhat ruthless with old permit records, which will be scanned, thrown away or "archived for disintegration" anyway, but historical documents are a whole 'nother matter.

somebody could develop a software to combine two shots of a page, one of the curl next to the binding, and one of the flat portion of the page, shot from different angles. Two views would probably produce a pretty good image. I deal with this, photocopying bound government records. And it could avoid that dangerous flattening on valuable historicals...