61–70 of 79 posts
Also, with digital stuff perhaps the calculus is different (although long-term preservation of that seems like a potential challenge), but they're on to something when they say microfiche copies are inferior.
It's interesting that one of the ideas this article criticizes is a harebrained combination of closed-circuit television and a "pneumatic page turner", intended to allow readers to study a book in a library many miles away so that only one copy would need to be kept. Yet, I think this basic idea was implemented in the digital realm by iTunes (or someone else) in recent years so that each person would not individually…
Ironically, out of these two, it's iTunes that's more harebrained. Considering that digital storage is almost free, and it's wasteful to transfer bits across half the planet each time you want to listen to a particular song again, streaming is a... pretty suboptimal solution. Especially that you essentially relinquish ownership of your own media, being instead at the mercy of a service provider. Alas, this was the wa…
Library books should definitely destroy shelf litter, like your 900 page "Java: The Complete Reference [2001]" type stuff. [Edit: When I wrote the above comment, had no idea whether or not this is a real book; I made up the title and the [2001] just to exemplify that sort of junk.]
In 100 years time this book will become of great interest to historians that are studying the dot com boom and wanting insight beyond the newspaper headlines of the era. What was it that powered this dot com thing? Why was so much money speculated into it? How hard was it to write code for the early web? Where is the seminal classic concerning how to program in the language of the era? Why did 'kazinator' say 'burn t…
I recognize the author as a well-known butcher of the C language. Future historians wanting to completely understand the term "bullschildt" will benefit from access to his books.
One of my local libraries recently threw out a dumpster full of books. There was a minor public outcry at the desecration of literature. The books in the dumpster had all been on sale for the last year, priced at 10p (13 cents) each. Most of them hadn't been checked out for over a decade and some hadn't been checked out since the 1970s. Sending books to be pulped is always sad, but the truth is that there are just to…
How can you verify that there were no changes made during the scanning process? This is one reason I would think that a researcher would prefer a hard copy and not digital.
One of my local libraries recently threw out a dumpster full of books. There was a minor public outcry at the desecration of literature. The books in the dumpster had all been on sale for the last year, priced at 10p (13 cents) each. Most of them hadn't been checked out for over a decade and some hadn't been checked out since the 1970s. Sending books to be pulped is always sad, but the truth is that there are just to…
They should try to give the books away for free before chucking them out, no? The word "free" eliminates an irrational roadblock (13c is basically free but still offers a hurdle) and if one person reads something interesting as a result, then it's a win. Also, they could box them up and offer each box off for 25c, thus offloading the responsibility of discarding the books onto individuals and preserving the notion of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, out of these two, it's iTunes that's more harebrained. Considering that digital storage is almost free, and it's wasteful to transfer bits across half the planet each time you want to listen to a particular song again, streaming is a... pretty suboptimal solution. Especially that you essentially relinquish ownership of your own media, being instead at the mercy of a service provider. Alas, this was the wa…
> Alas, this was the way to work around the huge mess that is IP laws. Or, and I realize this is a long shot, we could come to the realization that "intellectual property" is an oxymoron. Small hope, I know.
It is also true that the information inside those books is also taxpayer property, but right now the taxpayers can't access it because the Library industry, including it's professional organizations and professional educational programs, is technologically illiterate, but also lost sight of it's mission.
This fellow is called a crank, but he is cranking up the wrong tree. While he is complaining about a small number of important paper journals, and hoarders decry weeding, Alexandra Elbakyan is being threatened with prison for giving away taxpayer funded information - to the taxpayers. And Aaron Swartz... well. Rest in peace man. They just straight up killed him.
There is a saying that for books to survive, what they need is for an enormous amount of people to copy them. That is what allowed the ancient Roman works to survive, long after the Roman libraries were burnt down, and all the Roman bureaucracies in charge of maintaining important works had disappeared. That's why we can read old copies of the Bible or the Koran or the I Ching. That's why we have civilization, because people shared ideas instead of fighting about who, in the long run, far after useful value has been passed to the creator, actually owns them.
It's the modern way in which copyright is enforced, as though violators were terrorists, whether through the military or legal system or NDAs or intimidation, that's a much bigger threat to information surviving the long run, than librarians maintaining their stacks improperly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Alas, this was the way to work around the huge mess that is IP laws. Or, and I realize this is a long shot, we could come to the realization that "intellectual property" is an oxymoron. Small hope, I know.
I'd love to hear more about why intellectual property is an oxymoron - you have piqued my interest :D
It's a complex topic, really - on the one hand, you have the boneheaded stupidity of software patents, or of music and movie licensing (that have little to do with compensating original authors and performers, and is instead about middlemen getting rent); but on the other hand, you have drug research and $manybillion silicon fabs, which kind of require IP protection even exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If a man-made object is degraded to the point where it's garbage, why not? Sure, some of these tomes may have been recoverable Or hasn't been checked out in years, or is grossly outdated then why waste physical space to preserve it. Sure, some patrons might find novelty in there being a book that mentions all 48 states of the U.S. bbbbuutttt there's 50 now. Or 'hey we've got 12 copies of The Da Vinci Code, no one ha…
Not all books that are read are checked out. I think that some kinds of books should have a sheet or something so each person who reads it in the library can leave a mark. I'm still angry about the Dirac library moving a beautiful 1890's book on steam engineering to storage because "no one was checking it out". Of course no one was checking it out, it was a reference work!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, out of these two, it's iTunes that's more harebrained. Considering that digital storage is almost free, and it's wasteful to transfer bits across half the planet each time you want to listen to a particular song again, streaming is a... pretty suboptimal solution. Especially that you essentially relinquish ownership of your own media, being instead at the mercy of a service provider. Alas, this was the wa…
What about the storage space? How efficient is it to have the same music duplicated on countless hard drives, in most cases not having been listened to anytime recently?
Digital storage for all of the US Library of Congress would be about $2,000 last I checked. In ten more years, one tenth that.
(Organising and managing the data, and backups would be somewhat more, but I'm just ballparking here).
Storage is becoming cheaper than any sort of management.