4 ms·

"Guillotining books is unnecessary in order to acquire a good image". I don't know. I remember fondly a copier with a rounded screen at some university library

by cafard 5y ago

"Guillotining books is unnecessary in order to acquire a good image". I don't know. I remember fondly a copier with a rounded screen at some university library years ago (University of Colorado?) where one could plunk down a bound volume and get a good copy without damaging the spine. I did foolishly buy a book--specially ordered--which turned out to have been printed from page images taken by copying on a flat-platen copier. Better than fifty percent of the pages lost anything from a letter to several letters in the "gutter". "based on a pseudoscientific notion that books on wood-pulp paper are quickly turning to dust". Some are, some aren't. Some years back my parents shipped me the set of Mark Twain I had read as a boy. An awful lot of the pages were falling apart. Perhaps our family hadn't protected them well enough from light and air--but it's hard to see how one can read a book without exposure to both. We recycle probably 10" of newspapers--The Washington Post and The New York Times--ever week. In the days before the newspapers lost all the revenue from classified ads, it would have been twice that. So a year of a big metropolitan paper from the 1990s could amount to forty feet of newspaper. That's a fair bit to make room for. I have some sympathy for the librarians there.

systemvoltage 5y ago
We talk a lot about archiving stuff - great, but I hardly see the same emphasis on finding things. Search is equally important because thats where the rubber meets the road - actual utility of archive is realized and benefits of long term archives are reaped. Of course, there are queries such as "Find all newspapers for July 26, 1931" if something important had happened on that day - this would be an O(1) query for a library if they've indexed newspapers by date. Finding all mentions of "Bankruptcy of Cooks Mills in Lawson, Texas in 1931" is much harder problem if it is a physical storage. I'd be ok with converting all newspaper archives in digital format that's searchable.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Saving the physical versions is preservation of cultural history. The information content should definitely be digitized.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    How much of the physical version should be preserved? For how long? Singletons are probably not enough. But why save the physical aspects? Why not simply digitize people discussing it, take pictures of the original form, etc.? Why invest the time and energy maintaining items of dubious future need?
    - dEnigma 5y ago
      ,he said, ripping the first Gutenberg bible into shreds after copying it.
      - Aloha 5y ago
        a copy of a daily newspaper from Los Angeles in 1937 is not the same as the Gutenberg Bible. Newspapers were meant to be disposable, then and now, its good to store the information, but I'm highly skeptical of the need to hold onto the physical copies after scanning.
      - tomrod 5y ago
        I think it's worthwhile to keep a few foundational books around, especially those that set a language or were otherwise milestones in technology and cultural progress. We should not be hoarders. There is a balance to be struck. I recommend considering folks can be multifaceted and aren't solely bound to one's opposing opinion as they read down a comment chain. Good day.
    - afiori 5y ago
      at least a few of everything forever is a good starting point, as we move more and more into digital spaces it will become be even more feasible to archive physical copies when they exist (whit everything I also include WalMart depliants)
ghaff 5y ago
My understanding is that there are specialized copy devices that can do a decent job of bound volumes. But to the basic point... Paper takes up a lot of space. You can't keep physical copies of everything forever. It is unfortunate that it seems as if film and poor quality scans replaced physical copies in some cases too early. But libraries do run out of space, especially well-indexed space.
- lisper 5y ago
  > You can't keep physical copies of everything forever Actually, maybe that would be a good way to sequester carbon.
  - dmurray 5y ago
    It's about a thousand times more expensive per ton to store the paper in libraries in archival condition than to bury it in a bog, so not really.
    - lisper 5y ago
      True, but you get value from newspapers that you don't get from bogs so it could even out.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    An even more efficient way would be to just not cut down the trees to make paper in the first place.
    - a1369209993 5y ago
      Actually, that's a specific thing that does not work (at least long term). Trees die and rot if not cut down, and the carbon from that process has to be absorbed by the younger trees growing in the same space. So once a (mature) forest exists at a given location, it will no longer absorb any more carbon unless some of the trees are cut down and used for something that doesn't allow their carbon content to return to the atmosphere.
coliveira 5y ago
The issue is that in America most books are printed on lower quality paper to reduce costs. This kind of paper decays much faster. To see how better quality books look like, look at high end academic publications, which are still produced to be stored in libraries for a long time.
dredmorbius 5y ago
The problem of disintegrating paper is low-quality, acidic, "pulp" paper. Acid-free high-rag (containing actual cotton cloth) paper is archival quality and can and does last centuries. https://psap.library.illinois.edu/collection-id-guide/paper https://psap.library.illinois.edu/collection-id-guide/paper Pulp paper is largely an artefact of the 19th and 20th centuries: cheaper than rag, but also far less durable. It remains in use and is suitable for ephemeral content, but materials meant for long duration are created with archival-quality paper, inks, and other treatments.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Anyone that has taken Edward Tufte's[0] Data Visualization course (I don't know if he gives it anymore), has seen his favorite props, which are a couple of copies of Euclid's Geometry. Supposedly, these are real, 400-year-old books, printed by a 17th-century mathematician. He likes them, because of pop-out examples of geometric shapes. I think they are more modern reproductions, but I could be wrong. They are in great shape. [0] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

by cafard 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago

We talk a lot about archiving stuff - great, but I hardly see the same emphasis on finding things. Search is equally important because thats where the rubber meets the road - actual utility of archive is realized and benefits of long term archives are reaped. Of course, there are queries such as "Find all newspapers for July 26, 1931" if something important had happened on that day - this would be an O(1) query for a library if they've indexed newspapers by date. Finding all mentions of "Bankruptcy of Cooks Mills in Lawson, Texas in 1931" is much harder problem if it is a physical storage. I'd be ok with converting all newspaper archives in digital format that's searchable.

nerdponx 5y ago
Saving the physical versions is preservation of cultural history. The information content should definitely be digitized.
- tomrod 5y ago
  How much of the physical version should be preserved? For how long? Singletons are probably not enough. But why save the physical aspects? Why not simply digitize people discussing it, take pictures of the original form, etc.? Why invest the time and energy maintaining items of dubious future need?
  - dEnigma 5y ago
    ,he said, ripping the first Gutenberg bible into shreds after copying it.
    - Aloha 5y ago
      a copy of a daily newspaper from Los Angeles in 1937 is not the same as the Gutenberg Bible. Newspapers were meant to be disposable, then and now, its good to store the information, but I'm highly skeptical of the need to hold onto the physical copies after scanning.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      I think it's worthwhile to keep a few foundational books around, especially those that set a language or were otherwise milestones in technology and cultural progress. We should not be hoarders. There is a balance to be struck. I recommend considering folks can be multifaceted and aren't solely bound to one's opposing opinion as they read down a comment chain. Good day.
  - afiori 5y ago
    at least a few of everything forever is a good starting point, as we move more and more into digital spaces it will become be even more feasible to archive physical copies when they exist (whit everything I also include WalMart depliants)

ghaff 5y ago

My understanding is that there are specialized copy devices that can do a decent job of bound volumes. But to the basic point... Paper takes up a lot of space. You can't keep physical copies of everything forever. It is unfortunate that it seems as if film and poor quality scans replaced physical copies in some cases too early. But libraries do run out of space, especially well-indexed space.

lisper 5y ago
> You can't keep physical copies of everything forever Actually, maybe that would be a good way to sequester carbon.
- dmurray 5y ago
  It's about a thousand times more expensive per ton to store the paper in libraries in archival condition than to bury it in a bog, so not really.
  - lisper 5y ago
    True, but you get value from newspapers that you don't get from bogs so it could even out.
- nkrisc 5y ago
  An even more efficient way would be to just not cut down the trees to make paper in the first place.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    Actually, that's a specific thing that does not work (at least long term). Trees die and rot if not cut down, and the carbon from that process has to be absorbed by the younger trees growing in the same space. So once a (mature) forest exists at a given location, it will no longer absorb any more carbon unless some of the trees are cut down and used for something that doesn't allow their carbon content to return to the atmosphere.

coliveira 5y ago

The issue is that in America most books are printed on lower quality paper to reduce costs. This kind of paper decays much faster. To see how better quality books look like, look at high end academic publications, which are still produced to be stored in libraries for a long time.

dredmorbius 5y ago

The problem of disintegrating paper is low-quality, acidic, "pulp" paper. Acid-free high-rag (containing actual cotton cloth) paper is archival quality and can and does last centuries. https://psap.library.illinois.edu/collection-id-guide/paper https://psap.library.illinois.edu/collection-id-guide/paper Pulp paper is largely an artefact of the 19th and 20th centuries: cheaper than rag, but also far less durable. It remains in use and is suitable for ephemeral content, but materials meant for long duration are created with archival-quality paper, inks, and other treatments.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Anyone that has taken Edward Tufte's[0] Data Visualization course (I don't know if he gives it anymore), has seen his favorite props, which are a couple of copies of Euclid's Geometry. Supposedly, these are real, 400-year-old books, printed by a 17th-century mathematician. He likes them, because of pop-out examples of geometric shapes. I think they are more modern reproductions, but I could be wrong. They are in great shape. [0] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/