The issue here is with DRM and having to move across storage media. I still have ebooks as text files from 20 years ago that I got off the Gutenberg project, and tons of EPUBs which are guaranteed to be readable since they are just zipped up HTML/XHTML files and not proprietary. For that matter I have Pascal code from high school in the early 90s sitting around on floppy drives and then later hard drives.
Digital books wear out faster than physical books
151–160 of 453 posts
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I go to Olin Library at Cornell to get physical books today I find quite a few that are seriously yellowing and I am not talking seriously old but books printed in the 1970s. Paperbacks I have from the 1970s in my farmhouse which is a horrible place to keep books are often still in usable condition but have gotten much worse in the last 20 years.
I am sad about the libraries at Cornell that don't have physical books now. There was something about wandering down aisles looking at physical books. Is there a way for a member of the general public to access Cornell's electronic subscriptions, say from computers inside the libraries?
They shut down the Physical Science Library and the Engineering Library around the time I left CUL and put many of the science books (Q’s) in the math library and put many of the engineering books in Uris library which is split alphabetically by LC call numbers with Olin, the rest of the books went to the library Annex. A tunnel from Olin goes to the Kroc library which specializes in Asia and rare manuscripts.
There is a very good service to request books out of the annex and deliver them to a service point but people are more inclined to order books from AMZN rather than pull books from the annex or use a an express service like Borrow Direct that lets Cornellians get books from other Ivys in a few days.
There is still the fine arts library, the music library, the Africana library, Mann library at the ag school, the industrial labor relations library and the vet library. Those last three are in the state schools so any New Yorker can get a free library card for them. They closed down the Nestle library at the hotel school and consolidated that with the library at the b-school when they merged management and hotel.
There are still plenty of books, but people come to use the computers and there is intense demand for study and breakout space on central campus which competes with everything else.
If you have a Cornell netid you can access electronic resources from anywhere but not if you are a general public member. Back when I was involved in digital library stuff I worked on numerous projects that were free to access and my colleagues worked on even more such as the global performing arts database, images of the fantastic and the Ruleaux collection of gear contraptions that is on display at the engineering school but has interactive models of everything. They still do the arXiv preprint server but the funding climate got hostile circa 2005 when the library was in general contraction.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#153Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…
Seems like you’re overthinking it to me. If you want your kids to read books, take them the library or a bookstore. They’re bound to find something they like with enough exposure. That’s got to have a bigger impact than whether they see you reading a physical book.
The libraries are getting rid of books. Especially bound journals. My alma mater has a fabulous reading room, and just enough shelving still in the building to partition the study cubbies. It's more about aesthetic than knowledge.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#154Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…
Seems like you’re overthinking it to me. If you want your kids to read books, take them the library or a bookstore. They’re bound to find something they like with enough exposure. That’s got to have a bigger impact than whether they see you reading a physical book.
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Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is nonsense. I have almost never seen paperbacks wear out. Obviously it's possible, but even in any of their common failure modes, they are still easily read. I don't know why anyone would argue that saved files are somehow more reliable, it feels not at all genuine
You've never seen a paperback made in the 1960s-1990s? The paper is brittle and the pages are literally falling apart. You can't read paper where pieces of it have fallen off and disintegrated.
I have run across many books where the binding has disintegrated and the paper has degraded, but never to the point where a book could not be read. Assuming the book was handled with care (so that the unbound pages are not lost), every book could be read in its entirety.
I'm not saying that your scenario can't happen. I am saying that I would be surprised if all but the most carefully maintained digital library would outlive the cheapest of print books. Keep in mind that, at a bare minimum, a digital library must be backed up and transferred to new media every few years. You may get away with storing digital for a decade untended, but two decades is a bit of a stretch. Also keep in mind that even the slightest amount of bit rot can make an entire book unreadable. While this isn't really true of books stored as plain text, most modern formats seem to used some sort of compressed container (e.g. ePubs are compressed).
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I mean what I say. Mass market paperbacks are at a low standard but it is a standard. They are great to put in a backpack because of small size. A good trade paperback is better than any mass market paperback but trade paperbacks come in various sizes and designs and many of them have serious defects when manufactured.
Ah, I see where the size standardization could be valuable. I was thinking only of quality, and everything I've read (and I don't mean I just went to wikipedia ;-), though they do actually agree) suggested that a trade paperback was closer to a paper bound version of the original hardback, up to and including the size and everything, and built consistently to a higher standard than a mass market version.
Some of them are good but some of them split at the back with the slightest bit of handling. Self-published trade paperbacks are particularly bad.
As a category I don’t like them though I have plenty of them. My favorite kind of sci-fi book to collect these days are small hardcovers but for nonfiction I take what I can get.
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#157Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…
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Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#158I’m kinda ok with this. Books I suspect I’ll only read once I’m ok to buy digitally. Books that I think my kids might read, that I might read again, I buy as paper
Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#159Many of the books I read as a kid would never have been read if they weren't a physical chunk of dead wood in front of my face, sitting on a book shelf. Now, as a full-ass adult with young kids, I usually buy books from Kindle. It's far more convenient to use the Kindle app on my phone. But there's a voice in the back of my head wondering if I'm doing my kids a disservice. They don't see me holding a big chunk of dea…
I only read on my kindle and yet I have a room full of shelves overflowing with physical books. Most of the justification for those books and shelves is so my kids have a place to wander into and browse around if they want something new to read. Alas, I have yet to get them to show any interest in browsing the shelves. My daughter reads all the time but isn't interested in "old stuff". I'm holding out hope that she'l…
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Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Trade paperbacks will wear out in months or years >> go buy a cheesy romance novel from the 70s at any local thrift store Okay, but a "cheesy romance novel from the 70s" is 50 years old at this point. That's...a very generous interpretation of "will wear out in months or years". I suppose it's true that "500 months" is technically months, but...that's not how that phrase is typically used.
(also the fact that it's for sale in a thrift store is a dead giveaway that it's not completely worn out yet; are there many 3-1/4" floppies, or even CDs, storage media from 20-30 years ago, max, that are readily picked up by a layperson and perused now?)
No it isn’t: I’ve found books missing half the pages in a thrift store.