Why are libraries destroying books? (2002)

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #70

emodendroket wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The cost of storage has been falling by an order of magnitude per decade for at least the past 50 years. 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.

Post by 394549 » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

shittyadmin wrote: post #73

394549 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So store it digitally where it takes up less space. No need to keep a physical copy around. That's a glib answer that ignores the complexity of digital preservation. When you preserve something, you want it to last long term --decades to centuries. Storing things digitally entails choosing software, file formats, and storage media; and the long-term commitment to continuously copy and recopy, convert and reconvert,…

Don't bullshit me, copying files and applying error correction is trivial compared to maintaining paper copies of books which degrade and burn. We write emulators for just about every popular old computer system, so even if you have to use a dated reader to extract the info, should be possible. We have whole organizations dedicated to digital preservation that would have no issue doing this for millions of books.

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #72

dredmorbius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of storage has been falling by an order of magnitude per decade for at least the past 50 years. 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.

An album is probably for the purposes of discussion somewhere between 70 and 700 MB. Is keeping millions of copies of it in storage really cheaper than streaming? The "management" has to be in place either way, or how do I get them on disk in the first place? The costs of each individual steam are not, I suspect, very large

Post by c4h8o3del » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

err4nt wrote: post #66

c4h8o3del wrote: post #40

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