What is to be captured and how it is to be reused are issues that currently dominate a learning object discourse constructed around the potential for technology to enable learning resource management through the collection and reuse and learning objects. Efficiency and quality gains are promised for institutions that engage with the learning object economy. This account of the issues surrounding current conceptions of the reusability and reuse of learning resources questions whether object-based resource reuse can simultaneously achieve gains in both areas, and whether a learning object economy will sustain institutional development and diversity for those HEIs that participate in it.