6 ms·

Book of Lost Books Discovered in Danish Archive (2019)

78 points by portobello 6y ago

symplee 6y ago
Extraordinary find! (While also heartbreaking to read that so many literary works have been lost.) For another list of lost books, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work
- lethologica 6y ago
  Makes me think of the Library of Alexandria. Such a great, great shame to think of all the knowledge lost forever.
WalterBright 6y ago
> and plan to collaborate with the Arnamagnæan Institute to digitize the newly discovered volume. This just makes me want to scream. When finding an irreplaceable book, the first thing to do is take a photo of each page with a phone. It'll take a whole hour or two. Then there's a backup.
- pavlov 6y ago
  There is a world of difference between “phone snaps of pages in library lighting” and a proper digitization of an antique book.
  - andrewem 6y ago
    Also this book is nearly 500 years old, and is a foot thick and 2,000 pages. Just turning all the pages might cause serious damage. (But yes, the sooner it's digitized the better.)
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      I'm sure they already opened it and looked through it to see what it was. After all, there's a picture of it, open, with the article.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Not if your goal is to capture the text. I've used a phone for this purpose many times with nothing more than room lighting. Don't believe me? Try it yourself, right now! Remember that the HP archives burned down while waiting for a "proper digitization". Oops.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      This person gets stuff done!
    - Tor3 6y ago
      - The HP archives had been moved to a building without any protection. Before that the archives used to be in special vaults with fire-protection. (ref. spectrum.ieee.org) - There doesn't appear to have been plans to digitize them, not at a large scale anyway - these were papers and notes and documents in a wide variety of formats, tricky to digitize unless you have a professional organization to do so (e.g. a museum working with old documents). - In short, the HP archives seem to have been simply collected and stored, and not safely (after the archive was moved to an "ordinary" building).
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > these were papers and notes and documents in a wide variety of formats, tricky to digitize unless you have a professional organization to do so No, they are not tricky to digitize. Throw some random pieces of paper in various sizes and formats on the floor. Pull out your phone and take a picture and see for yourself. For example, when I mail someone a package at the post office, they hand me a receipt with the tracking number. I hold the receipt in my left hand, take a phone photo of it with my other left hand, and text it to the addressee. Zip, boom, done. Works great. The phone camera is simply the greatest document scanner ever invented, and everybody has one! > not safely Fireproof vaults have burned. See what happened to the Kennedy photo archive in the safe vault in the basement of the WTC. HP likely didn't scan them because they didn't have budget for a "proper digitization". So rather than cheap snaps with a phone camera, they now have nothing.
    - DanBC 6y ago
- goto11 6y ago
  The book was discovered inside a library of irreplaceable books at the University of Copenhagen. The library contains some of the most important books and writings for Scandinavian history. They know how to handle old books and have access to professional equipment designed for digitizing old and fragile manuscript. Here is a bit more detail: https://manuscript.ku.dk/news/a-new-discovery-in-the-arnamagnaean-collection/ https://manuscript.ku.dk/news/a-new-discovery-in-the-arnamag...
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    And it still isn't digitized and at risk of loss while everyone wrings their hands about budgets and schedules and perfection and what an abomination a phone picture would be :-) BTW, I watched a segment on TV on the Vatican Library where they turned pages on ancient books by - turning the pages! For gosh sakes, these are not Dead Sea Scroll fragments.
    - goto11 6y ago
      You can see some of their digitized manuscripts here: https://manuscript.ku.dk/about/digitised_manuscripts/ https://manuscript.ku.dk/about/digitised_manuscripts/ They seem to know how to digitize a book. Do you have any legitimate reason to believe the University of Copenhagen "wrings their hands" and need a HN-reader with a smartphone to save them?
      - HarrisReid 6y ago
        https://anyforsoft.com/blog/what-digital-experience-platform-dxp/ https://anyforsoft.com/blog/what-digital-experience-platform...
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Have they scanned the book yet? Nope. Case closed.
        goto11 6y ago
- tokai 6y ago
  >This just makes me want to scream You really shouldn't become so worked up over something you clearly don't understand. I can assure you that the book is in good professional hands.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Many archives have lost their books due to fire, war, flood and theft. Texts are lost all the time because no copies exist. What don't I understand? There's the HP archives that burned down, for one. For another, in a vault at the bottom of the World Trade Center, there was an archive of thousands of unpublished Kennedy photos. No copies were made of those photos. You'd think it would be safe in that vault. Nope. All gone. Unless the book is a suspected palimpsest, a phone photo will preserve the text more than adequately, and would take an hour or two to accomplish. Then the risk of total loss is averted, and they can relax and do their proper scan whenever budget and schedule allows.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      You're assuming the worst without knowing the situation. It's not my area at all but - 650 year old books may be fragile, both in paper (or whatever) and in the bindings. - old books/codices/etc often displayed under low light conditions because light damages them. A phone light may not be healthy. - how does it feel when someone clearly with less knowledge than you pops up to tell you where you're going wrong with D? Don't assume people are being stupid and you're the only smart one.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        > Don't assume people are being stupid and you're the only smart one. Sometimes really smart people do things in really suboptimal ways because of tradition or other blindspots, and an outside perspective can break a person or a field out of a local minimum. Maybe it's already being done, but installing a low-light camera above whatever workbench they use to analyze these ancient books with a footpedal or something to capture an image would provide some insurance against loss before proper archival, even if they don't open every page due to fragility. > A phone light may not be healthy. Modern cell phone cameras are quite capable of taking images without the flash in very low light conditions, either through high ISO or long exposures.
irrational 6y ago
Am I reading this right that they now have 15 volumes out of the 16 total volumes? Have they looked around in Denmark to see if the last ones is there also?
- narag 6y ago
  It seems the index was incomplete. From [a link from inside https://icolombina.es/ https://icolombina.es/ that doesn't work if there isn't a session, I removed it]: Of 3500 epítomes that were mentioned in Memorial al Emperador (report for the Emperor) Biblioteca Colombina keeps the following numbers: 509-576 (h.1r.-24v.), 697 (incomplete beginning)- 723 (incomplete ending) (h. 25r.-42v.), 881 (incomplete beginning)-956 (h. 43r.-74v), 957-1207 (h. 75r.-180v.), 1208- start of 1258 (h. 181r.-202v.), final of 1258-1316 (h. 203r.-227v.), 1317-1364 (incomplete ending) (h. 228r.-252v.), 1412-1550 (incomplete ending) (h. 253r.-516v.), 1576-1605 (incomplete ending), 1989 (incomplete begining)-2024 (incomplete ending?) (h. 527r.-538v.), 2183-2205 (h. 539r.-550v.), 3107-3130 (incomplete ending?) (h. 551r.-562v.) Also in http://www.icolombina.es/colombina/bibliograficos.htm http://www.icolombina.es/colombina/bibliograficos.htm there's a more complete story of copies and how they tried to create a systematic index... as an example, you can read a reference to 1635 books of the collection that were lost when a ship sunk from Venice to Seville. The part in Seville was recorded in microfilm years ago and it's possible to consult there. It doesn't seem to be online.

78 points by portobello 6y ago

Extraordinary find! (While also heartbreaking to read that so many literary works have been lost.) For another list of lost books, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work

lethologica 6y ago
Makes me think of the Library of Alexandria. Such a great, great shame to think of all the knowledge lost forever.

WalterBright 6y ago

> and plan to collaborate with the Arnamagnæan Institute to digitize the newly discovered volume. This just makes me want to scream. When finding an irreplaceable book, the first thing to do is take a photo of each page with a phone. It'll take a whole hour or two. Then there's a backup.

pavlov 6y ago
There is a world of difference between “phone snaps of pages in library lighting” and a proper digitization of an antique book.
- andrewem 6y ago
  Also this book is nearly 500 years old, and is a foot thick and 2,000 pages. Just turning all the pages might cause serious damage. (But yes, the sooner it's digitized the better.)
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I'm sure they already opened it and looked through it to see what it was. After all, there's a picture of it, open, with the article.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Not if your goal is to capture the text. I've used a phone for this purpose many times with nothing more than room lighting. Don't believe me? Try it yourself, right now! Remember that the HP archives burned down while waiting for a "proper digitization". Oops.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    This person gets stuff done!
  - Tor3 6y ago
    - The HP archives had been moved to a building without any protection. Before that the archives used to be in special vaults with fire-protection. (ref. spectrum.ieee.org) - There doesn't appear to have been plans to digitize them, not at a large scale anyway - these were papers and notes and documents in a wide variety of formats, tricky to digitize unless you have a professional organization to do so (e.g. a museum working with old documents). - In short, the HP archives seem to have been simply collected and stored, and not safely (after the archive was moved to an "ordinary" building).
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > these were papers and notes and documents in a wide variety of formats, tricky to digitize unless you have a professional organization to do so No, they are not tricky to digitize. Throw some random pieces of paper in various sizes and formats on the floor. Pull out your phone and take a picture and see for yourself. For example, when I mail someone a package at the post office, they hand me a receipt with the tracking number. I hold the receipt in my left hand, take a phone photo of it with my other left hand, and text it to the addressee. Zip, boom, done. Works great. The phone camera is simply the greatest document scanner ever invented, and everybody has one! > not safely Fireproof vaults have burned. See what happened to the Kennedy photo archive in the safe vault in the basement of the WTC. HP likely didn't scan them because they didn't have budget for a "proper digitization". So rather than cheap snaps with a phone camera, they now have nothing.
  - DanBC 6y ago
goto11 6y ago
The book was discovered inside a library of irreplaceable books at the University of Copenhagen. The library contains some of the most important books and writings for Scandinavian history. They know how to handle old books and have access to professional equipment designed for digitizing old and fragile manuscript. Here is a bit more detail: https://manuscript.ku.dk/news/a-new-discovery-in-the-arnamagnaean-collection/ https://manuscript.ku.dk/news/a-new-discovery-in-the-arnamag...
- WalterBright 6y ago
  And it still isn't digitized and at risk of loss while everyone wrings their hands about budgets and schedules and perfection and what an abomination a phone picture would be :-) BTW, I watched a segment on TV on the Vatican Library where they turned pages on ancient books by - turning the pages! For gosh sakes, these are not Dead Sea Scroll fragments.
  - goto11 6y ago
    You can see some of their digitized manuscripts here: https://manuscript.ku.dk/about/digitised_manuscripts/ https://manuscript.ku.dk/about/digitised_manuscripts/ They seem to know how to digitize a book. Do you have any legitimate reason to believe the University of Copenhagen "wrings their hands" and need a HN-reader with a smartphone to save them?
    - HarrisReid 6y ago
      https://anyforsoft.com/blog/what-digital-experience-platform-dxp/ https://anyforsoft.com/blog/what-digital-experience-platform...
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Have they scanned the book yet? Nope. Case closed.
      - goto11 6y ago
tokai 6y ago
>This just makes me want to scream You really shouldn't become so worked up over something you clearly don't understand. I can assure you that the book is in good professional hands.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Many archives have lost their books due to fire, war, flood and theft. Texts are lost all the time because no copies exist. What don't I understand? There's the HP archives that burned down, for one. For another, in a vault at the bottom of the World Trade Center, there was an archive of thousands of unpublished Kennedy photos. No copies were made of those photos. You'd think it would be safe in that vault. Nope. All gone. Unless the book is a suspected palimpsest, a phone photo will preserve the text more than adequately, and would take an hour or two to accomplish. Then the risk of total loss is averted, and they can relax and do their proper scan whenever budget and schedule allows.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    You're assuming the worst without knowing the situation. It's not my area at all but - 650 year old books may be fragile, both in paper (or whatever) and in the bindings. - old books/codices/etc often displayed under low light conditions because light damages them. A phone light may not be healthy. - how does it feel when someone clearly with less knowledge than you pops up to tell you where you're going wrong with D? Don't assume people are being stupid and you're the only smart one.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      > Don't assume people are being stupid and you're the only smart one. Sometimes really smart people do things in really suboptimal ways because of tradition or other blindspots, and an outside perspective can break a person or a field out of a local minimum. Maybe it's already being done, but installing a low-light camera above whatever workbench they use to analyze these ancient books with a footpedal or something to capture an image would provide some insurance against loss before proper archival, even if they don't open every page due to fragility. > A phone light may not be healthy. Modern cell phone cameras are quite capable of taking images without the flash in very low light conditions, either through high ISO or long exposures.

irrational 6y ago

Am I reading this right that they now have 15 volumes out of the 16 total volumes? Have they looked around in Denmark to see if the last ones is there also?

narag 6y ago
It seems the index was incomplete. From [a link from inside https://icolombina.es/ https://icolombina.es/ that doesn't work if there isn't a session, I removed it]: Of 3500 epítomes that were mentioned in Memorial al Emperador (report for the Emperor) Biblioteca Colombina keeps the following numbers: 509-576 (h.1r.-24v.), 697 (incomplete beginning)- 723 (incomplete ending) (h. 25r.-42v.), 881 (incomplete beginning)-956 (h. 43r.-74v), 957-1207 (h. 75r.-180v.), 1208- start of 1258 (h. 181r.-202v.), final of 1258-1316 (h. 203r.-227v.), 1317-1364 (incomplete ending) (h. 228r.-252v.), 1412-1550 (incomplete ending) (h. 253r.-516v.), 1576-1605 (incomplete ending), 1989 (incomplete begining)-2024 (incomplete ending?) (h. 527r.-538v.), 2183-2205 (h. 539r.-550v.), 3107-3130 (incomplete ending?) (h. 551r.-562v.) Also in http://www.icolombina.es/colombina/bibliograficos.htm http://www.icolombina.es/colombina/bibliograficos.htm there's a more complete story of copies and how they tried to create a systematic index... as an example, you can read a reference to 1635 books of the collection that were lost when a ship sunk from Venice to Seville. The part in Seville was recorded in microfilm years ago and it's possible to consult there. It doesn't seem to be online.