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I think this is a noble aim, however isn't this partly the duty of national libraries such as the British Library[1] and the Library of Congress[2]? Having said

I think this is a noble aim, however isn't this partly the duty of national libraries such as the British Library[1] and the Library of Congress[2]? Having said that, perhaps the point is to take such archives out of the hands of government organisations? [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_library http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_library [2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_congress http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_congress

jonknee 15y ago
Part of it seems to be that for copyright they want to own the physical books that they have scans of. Instead of destroying the books in the process like is common, they are taking care to preserve the books.
- singular 15y ago
  Agreed, that's clearly part of it, but the overall thrust of the article seems to be 'if we don't do this physical books will disappear', which seems to be duplicating the work of national libraries. It's a pity they seem to gloss over that, since the duplication of that effort does need some justification - perhaps the national libraries don't cover enough foreign books? Or they don't trust the government? Also it's a bit misleading, acting as if it doesn't already happen.
  - jerf 15y ago
    On the broad scale of history, neither national governments, nor their commitments to historical preservation, are something you can rely on. I do not mean this as a modern-day political snark at any particular government, I mean this as a historical comment. Of course there's no guarantee your archive will survive indefinitely either, but if we treasure them and have several of them the odds go up substantially.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    It is partly a matter of redundancy. Unthinkable as it might be, libraries do burn. They do have budget cuts. They get burglarized. Their archivists make mistakes. Better three universal libraries than two. Better four than three. When we're sure we have too many we'll deal with that; they are far easier to destroy than create. It is true that things might be more efficient if everyone pooled resources and, say, kept track of the fact that we have ten distributed copies of Book X in the world but only three of Y, so we should be looking out for more copies of Y. Which brings us to a second reason to start a new public archive: as a pilot project to explore different ways of running public archives. Modern infotech is evolving fast; presumably there is lots of room to experiment with different strategies, and the national libraries have only so much budget for research.
    - singular 15y ago
      Absolutely, agreed, I just wish the article had broached this.
    - mkr-hn 15y ago
      Redundancy is why so much information survived from ancient times. When Rome collapsed, scholars elsewhere hung on to its knowledge and continued building on it while Europe pulled itself back together.
astine 15y ago
I do work for the Library of Congress and no, it is not part of the mission of the Library to maintain a physical copy of every book ever written, though it does have extensive collections. Regardless, having redundancy in efforts will only make the efforts more effective. Edit: To expound on my last point, It not just redundancy in the collections, but redundancy in the effort which is important. If the LoC stores two copies of the same book in two geographically dispersed locations but makes the same brain-dead mistake in preservation process at both, then it doesn't matter that there were two copies. Entirely separate organizations using entirely separate methodologies are much safer than one organization. The general process for storing these books seems to be very different than that of the Library so it is good that he is duplicating the effort.
- gwern 15y ago
  > it is not part of the mission of the Library to maintain a physical copy of every book ever written I read once that the only things the Library is legally required to keep copies of are original author holographs; I don't know if that is true.

jonknee 15y ago

Part of it seems to be that for copyright they want to own the physical books that they have scans of. Instead of destroying the books in the process like is common, they are taking care to preserve the books.

singular 15y ago
Agreed, that's clearly part of it, but the overall thrust of the article seems to be 'if we don't do this physical books will disappear', which seems to be duplicating the work of national libraries. It's a pity they seem to gloss over that, since the duplication of that effort does need some justification - perhaps the national libraries don't cover enough foreign books? Or they don't trust the government? Also it's a bit misleading, acting as if it doesn't already happen.
- jerf 15y ago
  On the broad scale of history, neither national governments, nor their commitments to historical preservation, are something you can rely on. I do not mean this as a modern-day political snark at any particular government, I mean this as a historical comment. Of course there's no guarantee your archive will survive indefinitely either, but if we treasure them and have several of them the odds go up substantially.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  It is partly a matter of redundancy. Unthinkable as it might be, libraries do burn. They do have budget cuts. They get burglarized. Their archivists make mistakes. Better three universal libraries than two. Better four than three. When we're sure we have too many we'll deal with that; they are far easier to destroy than create. It is true that things might be more efficient if everyone pooled resources and, say, kept track of the fact that we have ten distributed copies of Book X in the world but only three of Y, so we should be looking out for more copies of Y. Which brings us to a second reason to start a new public archive: as a pilot project to explore different ways of running public archives. Modern infotech is evolving fast; presumably there is lots of room to experiment with different strategies, and the national libraries have only so much budget for research.
  - singular 15y ago
    Absolutely, agreed, I just wish the article had broached this.
  - mkr-hn 15y ago
    Redundancy is why so much information survived from ancient times. When Rome collapsed, scholars elsewhere hung on to its knowledge and continued building on it while Europe pulled itself back together.

astine 15y ago

I do work for the Library of Congress and no, it is not part of the mission of the Library to maintain a physical copy of every book ever written, though it does have extensive collections. Regardless, having redundancy in efforts will only make the efforts more effective. Edit: To expound on my last point, It not just redundancy in the collections, but redundancy in the effort which is important. If the LoC stores two copies of the same book in two geographically dispersed locations but makes the same brain-dead mistake in preservation process at both, then it doesn't matter that there were two copies. Entirely separate organizations using entirely separate methodologies are much safer than one organization. The general process for storing these books seems to be very different than that of the Library so it is good that he is duplicating the effort.

gwern 15y ago
> it is not part of the mission of the Library to maintain a physical copy of every book ever written I read once that the only things the Library is legally required to keep copies of are original author holographs; I don't know if that is true.