conflict

I bought this beautiful old book at an wonderful antique market last weekend, one of those last minute stops as I was heading home at the one booth I'd passed by on the way in and again when I'd put some of my purchases into the car and not stopped at. Decided at the last minute though to do a quick perusal and was glad I did. I was thrilled to get it for $15, it is filled with 500 pages of the very best collage material. However, my dilemma - it is big, in fact this scan took up the whole bed of my scanner, and it is heavy, probably weighing a good five pounds or so both of which will make trying to scan individual pages quite difficult. The best thing to do would be to disassemble the entire book - yet I am so reluctant to do so as it is such a great old tome. It's not in good shape but has obviously been well-used and referred to much over the years. Can you tell I am quite the book lover and find them all quite sacred?! The thing is if I don't take it apart I most likely will not use it for the purpose I initially intended, and the whole point of buying it was because I had so many thoughts run immediately through my head as to the great things I could do with it art-wise. But it's 123 years old! Do I keep it and love it as is, or bite the bullet and get out the x-acto?!