Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

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

#61

Post by gglitch »

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…

Libraries’ resources are not infinite, therefore most of them are explicitly optimized for circulation, not preservation. If they’re allocating valuable shelf space and staff time on something no one is using, they’re misallocating resources. You know what makes librarians’ hearts warm up? For people to use their spaces, collections, and services.

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

#62

Post by toast0 »

Guestmodinfo wrote: post #5
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libraries remove unborrowed books and sell them. Borrowed books stay on the shelf. That's what they do with books.

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

Uncirculated is just the first filter; most libraries don't cull solely on lack of circulation.

You've also got to look at what does it add to the collection, might it be used in the future, is it available elsewhere, etc.

But, at the end of the day, most libraries aren't archives. Having a collection of books that nobody uses doesn't provide a community service.

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

#63

Post by shayway »

wccrawford wrote: post #40
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…

My wife runs one locally. She's pretty happy with it, but I have to bite my tongue when talking about it with her. People frequently take all the good books, all at once, and don't return them. Someone just emptied out half of it yesterday, and I don't even think they were picky. They just took a whole shelf of books. It's such a crappy thing to do, and there's nothing that can be done to stop the bad actors.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Where I live actually has the opposite; there are ~6 within a mile, and they're usually completely full. People are always dumping huge collections into them, to where I never even have the chance to give back myself.

I don't know what makes it different here. But it is possible for them to work without safeguards.

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

#64

Post by faidit »

Quick, someone found a startup called Vibrary and hire vibrarians (I mean, spin up some agentic tablets on wheels) to generate these books on demand for people who request them, working backwards from the halluci-citations. Lawyers will love it! Forgeries were common for thousands of years after all. The last few hundred years of "truth" was a glitch waiting to be patched.

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

#65

Post by toomuchtodo »

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…

Little free libraries are fantastic when possible. With that said, assuming the final disposition will be a landfill or pulping via recycling, as a last resort the Internet Archive will accept for scanning and long term cold storage books they have not yet archived. They have an app available to scan UPC codes or OCR ISBNs to dedupe.

https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a...

Books that have been scanned can be shipped using the below info.

https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...

(no affiliation)

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

#66

Post by yesfitz »

WillAdams wrote: post #39

A library which was known for having a "last policy" system in place, should not have this difficulty. I would further argue that any library should be willing to accept a copy of any book which they do not have and safely store it until someone wishes to borrow it. I'm still salty that I had to buy a copy of Glenn Reid's _Thinking in PostScript_ when a local library discarded it from their stacks (there are other bo…

Not sure if you've already explored this avenue, but you can usually request media that your library doesn't have through the interlibrary loan[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlibrary_loan

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

#68

Post by kachapopopow »

mft_ wrote: post #54
kachapopopow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because something is public doesn't mean it should be shared with everyone, imagine you and your (ex: facebook group) have a nice spot near a public lake that you worked to clean up and even put a nice fireplace / furniture around it and then some tiktoker comes and says check out this amazing spot and now it's ruined. Yes it's public, anyone outside the group can find and see it, but it's clearly meant to be en…

Nah, I think the point is that if you do something deliberately in public, be it social media or something tangible in the real world, you relinquish control over its usage. If you don’t like this, then you can either try to restrict things to an extent e.g. by obscurity, like posting a YouTube video as unlisted, or building your fireplace somewhere public but remote or hidden, or you keep things enforceably private,…

in the end it is about intent and being respectful of that intent here.

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

#69

Post by kachapopopow »

nkrisc wrote: post #52
kachapopopow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because something is public doesn't mean it should be shared with everyone, imagine you and your (ex: facebook group) have a nice spot near a public lake that you worked to clean up and even put a nice fireplace / furniture around it and then some tiktoker comes and says check out this amazing spot and now it's ruined. Yes it's public, anyone outside the group can find and see it, but it's clearly meant to be en…

It’s public or it’s not public.

boiling things down to a binary output has always turned out great I presume

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

#70

Post by kachapopopow »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #55
kachapopopow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because something is public doesn't mean it should be shared with everyone, imagine you and your (ex: facebook group) have a nice spot near a public lake that you worked to clean up and even put a nice fireplace / furniture around it and then some tiktoker comes and says check out this amazing spot and now it's ruined. Yes it's public, anyone outside the group can find and see it, but it's clearly meant to be en…

If I host an event at a public park and hang up a sign "no journalists allowed, no telling anyone about this event, it's our little secret" I don't think it's reasonable to expect that to be honored. I wouldn't be offended to see that reported in the local paper. Quite the opposite.

as I tried to imply, it's about being respectful, all there is to it.
Post reply on HN