In one case described in the report, a professor at a university in the United States was able to direct a graduate student working in archives in Europe. At the end of each day the student would upload the photographs he had collected, allowing the professor to focus his tasks for the following day.

Researchers say these new efficiencies have transformed their practices.

“I’ve used digital camera strategies for reducing the length of archival trips,” Shane Landrum, a graduate student in history at Brandeis University, wrote on his Web site. “Instead of building a giant research budget to support months on end in a particular faraway collection, I’ve put together short travel grants, and I’ve been able to collect research materials that wouldn’t otherwise have been easy to amass.”

The report also pointed out that there are benefits to the archival institution — and to future researchers. In one case, a researcher scanned documents in a local archive that had never been scanned before, then contributed his scanned work to the archives, in the hope that it would make the work more accessible to others in the future.

But for all its academic potential and efficiency benefits, some see the opening of the world’s archives as a mixed blessing. Archivists who are in charge of caring for documents that have in the past been looked at rarely, and by a relative handful of historians, worry about damage to bindings from careless researchers who flatten books to obtain better images. They also worry about the loss of control, which in some cases can lead to violations of agreements that the archives have with donors of historical materials.

Libraries have also had to adapt their policies to the new copying technology, something with which they are just now coming to terms, said Dr. Lowood. For example, initially Stanford’s archives charged people when they used their own equipment to copy material, but a year ago the practice was halted. That has eliminated a source of revenue, and prompted new guidelines: Now researchers are permitted to bring their own gear to copy documents. They are, however, required to show that they can use the equipment correctly.

And Stanford may be ahead of the curve, said Robert G. Trujillo, head of special collections at the library. He said many collections still charge researchers, even if only a flat fee, for the privilege of making their own digital copies.

Beyond the intellectual property issue, the new technology has created a surfeit of material for researchers, and that in turn has spawned a new challenges — principally, how to manage the wealth of material that is now accessible.