Quote Originally Posted by melk View Post
"I tried a scanner years ago and man"
And that pretty much tells the whole story. While scanners are not instantaneous, they are much faster than they were, and a heck of lot cheaper. With modern OCR software you could even scan in as text instead of an image. Either way, the end result would be unblemished back issues and a searchable online database of patterns. Worth the experimentation.

P.S. I've never bother to organize my back issues...too much work. YMMV.