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These rare books are an intellectual heritage. One thing that should be top priority for libraries that have these valuable works is high fidelity digital scans
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
These rare books are an intellectual heritage. One thing that should be top priority for libraries that have these valuable works is high fidelity digital scans of all their works.
Any location in the world can be subject to man-made or natural destruction. If these collections are digitized and placed online, at least there is a better chance of the knowledge being preserved.
- emmelaich 6y agoYes please. Google would do it for free.
- acheron 6y agoAnd then show you ads when you look at them.
- mindcrime 6y agoWhich you will either A. block with uBlock Origin, etc. or B. not be bothered by if you choose not to use an ad blocker This isn't the worst imaginable outcome, especially weighed against losing access the the resources altogether.
- fyver 6y agoAnd then they get bored of the project and delete everything.
- quickthrower2 6y agoEach of the above generating a 200 comment HN thread
- PapaBless 6y agoMore google control, no thxs.
- _ph_ 6y agoSo much this. In recent years, we had one large library with historic books and one city archive of a 1000 years largely damaged and destroyed by a fire and a building collapse. These kind of heritage all should be digitized in high-res and put online so that a) all people have access to this heritage and b) the online archives could be easily replicated. If there were just 10 archives for a country like Germany, and all these archives would replicate each other, this would mean a huge level of safety. Add Amazon glacier or something to it, and we have a good chance of preserving this important part of history.
- microtherion 6y ago> These rare books are an intellectual heritage. From the description in the article, it sure sounds so. Yet one detail in this story that grabbed me is that for 25 years, apparently not a single person noticed any of these books missing. Were there ZERO people who wanted to have a look at them? Was everybody who wanted to see a book being told it was "under restauration", was satisfied with the explanation and never followed up? I wonder how much of a library's ancient book collection is just pride of ownership, rather than the opportunity to explore the books themselves. [None of that is meant to excuse the crime, BTW]