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> Sending books to be pulped is always sad, but the truth is that there are just too many books. Often it's not obsolete books that are destroyed, where there

by 394549 8y ago

> Sending books to be pulped is always sad, but the truth is that there are just too many books. Often it's not obsolete books that are destroyed, where there might be 1,000 other copies out there, but one-of-a-kind archival records: >> The core of the book recounts Baker's attempt, in 1999, to persuade the British Library not to junk more than 2,000 bound volumes of American newspapers - the last remaining copies in the world - including a complete run of the Chicago Tribune from 1888 to 1958 and hundreds of editions of Joseph Pulitzer's ground-breaking colour broadsheet of the 1890s, the New York World. > A researcher doesn't gain a great deal of benefit from seeing an original paper copy; in most cases, they'd prefer a digital copy. Preserving paper is inherently more expensive than preserving microfiche or digital scans. Maybe now, but preservation isn't about now, it's about the distant future. Paper is one of the few storage mediums that has proven longevity and also requires no special reading hardware. Microfiche is probably OK (there was an article recently that stated it could lat 500 years), but I'd dispute strongly that "preserving paper is inherently more expensive than preserving ... digital scans." Digital data requires massive amounts of infrastructure to be usable (hardware, software, storage media, and reading hardware), and the rapid pace of change of that infrastructure means that enormous, continuous efforts must be made to keep it readable in the future. Seal a newspaper up in a wall and it'll still be readable in 100 years. If you stop your digital preservation efforts for that long, you've lost everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation

madeuptempacct 8y ago
I agree with this - I think there is a lot of value in having hard-copies, if just for the ability to walk through the shelves and pick something up. I know most people don't do this, I know it's not cost effective, but I have walked through my University's library and picked up a random book here and there. It's kind of the same with pictures. Most of the people I know have thousands of pictures on their phone - most of which they will never, ever look through.
cimmanom 8y ago
To what degree is preservation the responsibility of a local lending library? (As opposed to an archive; a museum; the Library of Congress; county courthouses; etc?)
- 394549 8y ago
  > To what degree is preservation the responsibility of a local lending library? (As opposed to an archive; a museum; the Library of Congress; county courthouses; etc?) Personally, I would say even local lending libraries have a part to play in preservation. They may have copies of local periodicals that exist nowhere else. They should at least do some due diligence with other, more common, items to make sure they don't discard anything that's potentially now unique or rare (e.g. a collection of unfashionable midcentury children's books that all libraries decided to purge around the same time). Stuff like that should be kept in an out of the way warehouse or something. A local lending library shouldn't have to keep seldom used books in easily accessible circulation, but I feel there should be other options besides that, pulping, and digitization.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Still not sure the local library should be responsible for the actual preservation, but I like your idea on principle -- maybe having a more central organization or archive handle the preservation and coordinate determining what needs preserving (e.g. how is that local library to know that every other library in the country pulped that particular children's book 10 years ago?)
asdfman123 8y ago
Maintaining digital records would probably require some man hours to watch them over the years, and you'd probably need to hire some tech labor to migrate the data every so often. That long-term maintenance cost can't be ignored. But also don't neglect the long term costs of setting aside thousands of square feet, usually in an expensive metropolis, for storage. I mean, I know as a programmer it wouldn't be a ton of effort to store a few terabytes on a local machine, make offsite backups, and write a program every 10 years to re-jigger the technology. Renting out an extra bedroom which I would fill with library shelves would be far more expensive.
skookumchuck 8y ago
Paper burns. All those paper archives are vulnerable to fires, and indeed much of paper history has been lost to fires. Digital archives get duplicated (unless the owner jealously hides it away). Duplication is the most resistant means of longevity.

by 394549 8y ago

madeuptempacct 8y ago

I agree with this - I think there is a lot of value in having hard-copies, if just for the ability to walk through the shelves and pick something up. I know most people don't do this, I know it's not cost effective, but I have walked through my University's library and picked up a random book here and there. It's kind of the same with pictures. Most of the people I know have thousands of pictures on their phone - most of which they will never, ever look through.

cimmanom 8y ago

To what degree is preservation the responsibility of a local lending library? (As opposed to an archive; a museum; the Library of Congress; county courthouses; etc?)

394549 8y ago
> To what degree is preservation the responsibility of a local lending library? (As opposed to an archive; a museum; the Library of Congress; county courthouses; etc?) Personally, I would say even local lending libraries have a part to play in preservation. They may have copies of local periodicals that exist nowhere else. They should at least do some due diligence with other, more common, items to make sure they don't discard anything that's potentially now unique or rare (e.g. a collection of unfashionable midcentury children's books that all libraries decided to purge around the same time). Stuff like that should be kept in an out of the way warehouse or something. A local lending library shouldn't have to keep seldom used books in easily accessible circulation, but I feel there should be other options besides that, pulping, and digitization.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Still not sure the local library should be responsible for the actual preservation, but I like your idea on principle -- maybe having a more central organization or archive handle the preservation and coordinate determining what needs preserving (e.g. how is that local library to know that every other library in the country pulped that particular children's book 10 years ago?)

asdfman123 8y ago

Maintaining digital records would probably require some man hours to watch them over the years, and you'd probably need to hire some tech labor to migrate the data every so often. That long-term maintenance cost can't be ignored. But also don't neglect the long term costs of setting aside thousands of square feet, usually in an expensive metropolis, for storage. I mean, I know as a programmer it wouldn't be a ton of effort to store a few terabytes on a local machine, make offsite backups, and write a program every 10 years to re-jigger the technology. Renting out an extra bedroom which I would fill with library shelves would be far more expensive.

skookumchuck 8y ago

Paper burns. All those paper archives are vulnerable to fires, and indeed much of paper history has been lost to fires. Digital archives get duplicated (unless the owner jealously hides it away). Duplication is the most resistant means of longevity.