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> Less environmentally harmful I believe this is a pretty naive analysis. If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let a

> Less environmentally harmful I believe this is a pretty naive analysis. If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.

froo 11y ago
Vs maintaining it on a USB stick? I think it's a hollow argument
tedunangst 11y ago
Well, how many joules does it take to maintain a paper library for a century and how many joules to maintain an ebook library?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  On a hard drive or tape system? On a reader - if you're counting the cost of electricity, let's count the cost of shipping entire forests of paper around the world, first to paper mills, then to print factories, then to bookshops and libraries. And the cost of travel to and from a lending library for every reader. And why not also include the cost of lighting to read the book? (I can read my Kobo in the dark because it has a very low energy backlight. My eyes don't work so well with the lights off, so I've never been able to do that with paper.) I wonder how many people here understand that giant warehouses full of overstocked print are regularly shipped back from stores and pulped. Does everyone understand how much space and weight a million copies of a failed bestseller takes up? Does everyone know that paper books are always sold sale-or-return, so if they don't go out the front door they go out the back door onto a truck, with the covers stripped so they can't be resold? The original article is factually wrong in significant ways. Not all ebooks are sold by Amazon, not all ebooks have DRM, and not all ebooks that start with DRM continue to have DRM. At this point, arguing against digital publishing because Amazon is like arguing against the printing press because the medieval Catholic church was fond of censorship and burning.
wlesieutre 11y ago
Would it? If all books were available in DRM-free formats, you could replace an entire building with a single computer and some offsite backups. The energy use for lighting, air conditioning, elevators, and everything else that goes into running a library is non-negligible. Not to mention the embodied energy of all the materials for building and maintaining a large structure for 100 years. That's not to say I'd support replacing libraries with an ebook lending system; they serve important functions beyond book lending, and I like paper books anyway. But I wouldn't claim that they're low energy.
PopeOfNope 11y ago
If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly. I'm not so sure. The longer a book is in existence, the more expensive it is to maintain. Over time, books fall prey to dust, mites, mold, acids used to treat the paper. As books wear out, you upgrade to newer printings. Very similar things happen to computer files; bit rot, format support, etc. From an energy standpoint, there's a lot more up front energy needed to produce a book than an e-book. After it's created and read, an e-book sits on a hard drive or a flash drive, unused, and thus uses little to no energy for storage. Physical books, on the other hand, require dusting and cleaning, which requires energy in the form of a fed human being and/or a vacuum cleaner. In in depth comparison between the two types of libraries would be very interesting. Even after typing all of that, I'm not sure which one would come out on top.
zeveb 11y ago
> If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly. I suspect that the energy cost of maintaining a paper book at a decent temperature for a decade would be orders of magnitude worse than the energy cost of backing up an ebook for a decade. My concern is that after a decade, all mirrors of the ebook might disappear.

froo 11y ago

Vs maintaining it on a USB stick? I think it's a hollow argument

tedunangst 11y ago

Well, how many joules does it take to maintain a paper library for a century and how many joules to maintain an ebook library?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
On a hard drive or tape system? On a reader - if you're counting the cost of electricity, let's count the cost of shipping entire forests of paper around the world, first to paper mills, then to print factories, then to bookshops and libraries. And the cost of travel to and from a lending library for every reader. And why not also include the cost of lighting to read the book? (I can read my Kobo in the dark because it has a very low energy backlight. My eyes don't work so well with the lights off, so I've never been able to do that with paper.) I wonder how many people here understand that giant warehouses full of overstocked print are regularly shipped back from stores and pulped. Does everyone understand how much space and weight a million copies of a failed bestseller takes up? Does everyone know that paper books are always sold sale-or-return, so if they don't go out the front door they go out the back door onto a truck, with the covers stripped so they can't be resold? The original article is factually wrong in significant ways. Not all ebooks are sold by Amazon, not all ebooks have DRM, and not all ebooks that start with DRM continue to have DRM. At this point, arguing against digital publishing because Amazon is like arguing against the printing press because the medieval Catholic church was fond of censorship and burning.

wlesieutre 11y ago

Would it? If all books were available in DRM-free formats, you could replace an entire building with a single computer and some offsite backups. The energy use for lighting, air conditioning, elevators, and everything else that goes into running a library is non-negligible. Not to mention the embodied energy of all the materials for building and maintaining a large structure for 100 years. That's not to say I'd support replacing libraries with an ebook lending system; they serve important functions beyond book lending, and I like paper books anyway. But I wouldn't claim that they're low energy.

PopeOfNope 11y ago

If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly. I'm not so sure. The longer a book is in existence, the more expensive it is to maintain. Over time, books fall prey to dust, mites, mold, acids used to treat the paper. As books wear out, you upgrade to newer printings. Very similar things happen to computer files; bit rot, format support, etc. From an energy standpoint, there's a lot more up front energy needed to produce a book than an e-book. After it's created and read, an e-book sits on a hard drive or a flash drive, unused, and thus uses little to no energy for storage. Physical books, on the other hand, require dusting and cleaning, which requires energy in the form of a fed human being and/or a vacuum cleaner. In in depth comparison between the two types of libraries would be very interesting. Even after typing all of that, I'm not sure which one would come out on top.

zeveb 11y ago

> If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly. I suspect that the energy cost of maintaining a paper book at a decent temperature for a decade would be orders of magnitude worse than the energy cost of backing up an ebook for a decade. My concern is that after a decade, all mirrors of the ebook might disappear.