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Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

gizmodo.com

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Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#21

Post by mschild »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
k310 wrote: post #6

I visited the local library (California foothills) during a “book sale”, and what didn’t sell was left out in boxes, either for cheap or free. What didn’t move was destined for the landfill. I was aghast, but without enough room to take in the strays. Real estate is unforgiving. I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed…

> I am in favor of “little free libraries” Do these work for kids' books? Whenever I've seen them geared towards adults, the content is absolute crap.

You get of what you put in. (Sort of)

I had a lot of good books that I finished reading and wouldn't realistically touch again.

Whenever I went to browse for some books I would leave one of them in exchange. Over time, the quality went up because other people started doing the same.

To be honest, I did curate the available books at it as well. Obvious crap (self-published conspiracy theory stuff) was thrown out. At some point you will also have to simple throw out some old ones if they never get taken. Space is limited and a 50 year old book that is collecting dust is not useful to anyone.

Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#22

Post by wakawaka28 »

sajb wrote: post #18

This seems to have a simple solution - if you can't find any reference to a particular book by googling its title, then it likely does not exist.

It depends on the title. Many titles are difficult to search for.

Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#23

Post by Krasnol »

sajb wrote: post #18

This seems to have a simple solution - if you can't find any reference to a particular book by googling its title, then it likely does not exist.

The problem is that this solution runs counter to what is expected from AI customers today: subscribe and turn off your brain.

(Yes, I know about the phrases written below every singe one of them. They're probably being taken just as seriously as ToS.)

Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#24

Post by AndrewDucker »

khalic wrote: post #20

Ah Gizmodo, always the paragon of good journalism. The person has explicitly asked her tweets not be used in external websites, and of course this zombie tabloid doesn't give a damn

The post they quoted is the one that's marked as "do not share".

Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#25

Post by dugmartin »

k310 wrote: post #6

I visited the local library (California foothills) during a “book sale”, and what didn’t sell was left out in boxes, either for cheap or free. What didn’t move was destined for the landfill. I was aghast, but without enough room to take in the strays. Real estate is unforgiving. I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed…

We have a small local company that takes bulk book (and cds, dvds, video games, vinyl records) donations. That company has couple of retail used bookstores and also sells both retail and wholesale online but, according to their owner, most of what they get is sold for pulp.

My wife is an elementary school reading teacher and runs a yearly family book night where she takes book donations she gets all year and fills a bunch of portable tables in the gym with kids (and adult) books that are free for the taking. What is left over is taken (by me) to that local company and dumped in huge bins. If you are looking to get rid of a bunch of books I'd also suggest contacting your local schools to see if they take donations.

Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#26

Post by wakawaka28 »

CJefferson wrote: post #17
Guestmodinfo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging books by their unborrowedness is like judging a youtube video's educational content by its view count. It's a bad reality created by the powers that be

Why have shelves full of books that haven’t been borrowed in 15 years? what benefit is that providing?

What you are saying is especially true for fiction, less so for nonfiction. Many nonfiction topics are important and require a large volume of materials to remain as reference. For example, you never know when it might be important to know how something was manufactured 50 years ago, or what happened in Congress 20 years ago, or what a newspaper reported a hundred years ago. This makes it really hard to judge which items could be culled. I'm inclined to agree that borrow rates are relevant but they are not the only thing that matters. The possibilities of digitization and interlibrary loan make culling less risky, but someone still has to decide to keep unpopular reference materials for them to remain available.

Re: Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

#27

Post by tgv »

k310 wrote: post #6

I visited the local library (California foothills) during a “book sale”, and what didn’t sell was left out in boxes, either for cheap or free. What didn’t move was destined for the landfill. I was aghast, but without enough room to take in the strays. Real estate is unforgiving. I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed…

These free book shelves are no substitute for a real library, are they? In my experience, the offering is really limited. It's nice for a random find, but that's all. It's tough that books get burned, but if nobody wants to read them, there's no alternative.
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