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> Libraries don't even need books anymore This line gets trod out every time there is a discussion like this on HN, but it still isn’t true. I suspect this att

> Libraries don't even need books anymore This line gets trod out every time there is a discussion like this on HN, but it still isn’t true. I suspect this attitude comes primarily from people in STEM fields, because there only the most recent content is relevant, and recent content is available in digital form. But there are still whole fields – e.g. archaeology, linguistics, history, literature – where so many books have never been digitized. Anyone interested in such topics today often has to turn to a paper book that is a few decades old, and so thank goodness for libraries that have abundant stacks or can get you quick and cheap ILL. That is true even for many things that a layman readership might want to read, not just a scholarly audience. For example, a lot of 20th-century poetry is not available in ebook form, and with their limited typesetting capabilities, MOBI/EPUB are terrible formats for reading that genre anyway.

xvilka 6y ago
Publishers and copyright is also the reason why most books are not digitized. After all Google tried to do so, and was restricted by the copyright holders and publishers. The whole system is broken. Probably it should took a model from pharmaceutical business - hold copyright for a couple decades, then it's expired.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Publishers and copyright is also the reason why most books are not digitized. There are also cost issues even when the book is already public domain. Yes, there have been efforts to scan a lot of old books, but often that has just been making fairly low-resolution scans with little or no clean-up process, and assembling those scans into huge and ungainly PDFs. That is OK for old prose works where a reader may only need to consult a single page. But appropriately digitizing something like a book of elaborately typeset poetry, or an art book (i.e. a large-format book with reproductions of paintings) requires a great deal of human effort, and that is expensive. It is no surprise that the print format still reigns in those genres.
  - sjy 6y ago
    I read a lot of those huge and ungainly scanned PDFs, even when the text is available as HTML, because I prefer my reference material to be properly typeset and paginated. It’s much more convenient than visiting my local library and handling physical books, which I wouldn’t use at all if a scanned PDF was always available. I’m with the grandparent here – the problem isn’t the amount of work required to republish a book in a digital-first format like EPUB. It’s the fact that sharing books electronically in any format is a copyright violation, so the scans that exist already aren’t publicly accessible in DRM-free formats. That being the case, recreating those books in digital-first formats requires even more effort (because you have to find and scan the book first), for almost no reward (because you can’t publish the results).

xvilka 6y ago

Publishers and copyright is also the reason why most books are not digitized. After all Google tried to do so, and was restricted by the copyright holders and publishers. The whole system is broken. Probably it should took a model from pharmaceutical business - hold copyright for a couple decades, then it's expired.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> Publishers and copyright is also the reason why most books are not digitized. There are also cost issues even when the book is already public domain. Yes, there have been efforts to scan a lot of old books, but often that has just been making fairly low-resolution scans with little or no clean-up process, and assembling those scans into huge and ungainly PDFs. That is OK for old prose works where a reader may only need to consult a single page. But appropriately digitizing something like a book of elaborately typeset poetry, or an art book (i.e. a large-format book with reproductions of paintings) requires a great deal of human effort, and that is expensive. It is no surprise that the print format still reigns in those genres.
- sjy 6y ago
  I read a lot of those huge and ungainly scanned PDFs, even when the text is available as HTML, because I prefer my reference material to be properly typeset and paginated. It’s much more convenient than visiting my local library and handling physical books, which I wouldn’t use at all if a scanned PDF was always available. I’m with the grandparent here – the problem isn’t the amount of work required to republish a book in a digital-first format like EPUB. It’s the fact that sharing books electronically in any format is a copyright violation, so the scans that exist already aren’t publicly accessible in DRM-free formats. That being the case, recreating those books in digital-first formats requires even more effort (because you have to find and scan the book first), for almost no reward (because you can’t publish the results).