10 ms·

I once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. Instead of stamping the card, the librarian simply put a barcode on the inside cover and scanned

I once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. Instead of stamping the card, the librarian simply put a barcode on the inside cover and scanned that. I felt a little sad that the history of the book is no longer stamped into it anymore. I felt a sense of connection knowing just how many people had read the same book in the past.

cableshaft 5y ago
I agree, I always got a kick out of that. Always interesting to see when someone thought it was interesting enough to check out last.
Archelaos 5y ago
I have had the opposite experience: I once borrowed a more than 100 year old edition of U.S. Grant's autobiography from the university library. There were some pencil notes on the first pages, but I had to cut open the last hundred pages. Apparently, no one has read the book in its entirety in more than a century.
onemoresoop 5y ago
I remember that too. One could infer some useful information from those dates alone. Similarly, it just dawned upon me how useful the dislike counter from youtube was to me, I was drawing some metrics from it that I no longer can. The like counter really has no value without the dislike one IMO.
- lettergram 5y ago
  You’d have to look at like vs view ratios. But I agree, the dislike button made that far easier. Unfortunately, the regime didn’t like the button lol
  - Talanes 5y ago
    But the majority of people aren't hitting anything, so now you're lumping in disinterest in ratings with active dislike.
    - anon9001 5y ago
      I think someone should add a "ratio" field via extension. It'd be a useful addition to https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ which is already modifying the youtube UI.
- JasonCannon 5y ago
  Now you need to determine if you like the video for what it is, instead of relying on the masses to tell you if you dislike the video. Or, you know, just read the comments.
  - Lhiw 5y ago
    I was using it to determine of I was being unfair in my critique. If nobody else is disliking it maybe my biases are effecting my perception. Not everything is confirmation bias. Some people use social feedback to regulate themselves into not being total weirdos.
    - bee_rider 5y ago
      I have upvoted your comment, but feel the need to inform you that I am, in fact, a total weirdo. So, take that as you will.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    I always determined whether I liked a video for what it was anyway, I never disliked a video if other people disliked it. But for me the like dislike ratio helped avoid scams. I feel that scammers are empowered by having only the like counter display
iancmceachern 5y ago
I once bought a used book for a family member for their birthday. It turned out to be an old library book and the card within was stamped with the last date the book was checked out, which was on their birth date, down to even the correct year.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thechao 5y ago
Without naming a place, a friend of mine checked out a copy of the parliamentary proceedings (from the UK) of the House of Lords from the early 19th c. They were the only one to have ever checked any of these books out. Mostly boring, but the HoL could get up to funny stuff when they were bored or irritating each other. My only gripe was that they highlighted their favorite bits in yellow. I mean — come on! Their counterargument was that, in the year 2150, when the next person checks out the proceedings, they'd know where the good parts were.
- papandada 5y ago
  That's also why on the bus I turn my music up really loud for the good songs
- dingusbingus 5y ago
  As a non-native english speaker this post confuses me a lot, did the HoL highlight their own favourite bits? Was it a group of friends that checked out the proceedings?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    It's a bit confusing (this is commonly called playing the pronoun game, where pronouns are used without context on what they're referring to), but they mean that their friend is the one highlighting good parts in the book.
    - tunesmith 5y ago
      I've never heard "the pronoun game" but I know I have a habit of over-writing to avoid it. (Or maybe I'm writing just enough.)
      - tzs 5y ago
        OT: this is completely off topic, but I'd kind of like to see an effort to take advantage of the current reexamination that is taking place in some circles over the issue of gendered pronouns to just fix the whole damn pronoun system. We need a set of pronouns, which I'll call P1, P2, P3, ... for now to avoid having to think of names for them, that are based on position. P1 refers to the first thing in the sentence that could be referred to by a pronoun, P2 refers to the second thing in the sentence that could be referred to by a pronoun, and so on. We also might need a set of pronouns N1, N2, ... that refer to the last thing before the sentence that could take a pronoun, the next to last thing before the sentence that can take a pronoun, and so on.
Causality1 5y ago
Many of the books in my library came from used library book sales, especially those I read as a child. When I read them again I always look at the checkout dates and wonder about those people, whether the book had the same impact on their lives it had on mine decades later.
userbinator 5y ago
I've "borrowed" books from archive.org that had their last borrower's date in the late 19th/early 20th century, similarly visible from the log affixed inside the cover --- which the archive.org scanners clearly preserved. When I come across such a book I also ponder who the last borrower was.
tzs 5y ago
Did they just stamp the dates or did they also stamp names? The library system were I grew up stamped both. The library cards had your name and library card number in raised reversed lettering. When you checked out a book the librarian took the card from the book and your library card and put it in a device that used the raise lettering to print your name and card number on the card from the book. The newly stamped card got filed away somewhere, and they put a card in the book that had the due date stamped on it. When the book's card got filled up with checkouts on both sides, they'd replace it with a new card.
- lambertsimnel 5y ago
  Maybe stamping names has fallen out of fashion for data protection reasons. I seem to recall disquiet about the US federal government's access to library records under the George W Bush administration. Maybe some people would be similarly unhappy with their fellow library users knowing which books they'd borrowed. On a similar note, my university used to operate an alumni directory (open to all alumni), and the local paper used to publish the names of all graduates. Both were stopped without any stated reason, but I wonder whether they were judged to violate data protection law or implicated in harassment.
  - tzs 5y ago
    It's almost certainly due to data protection. That was much less of a concern before the end of the last century, because access to public records was generally much more work than it is now. Records were usually either only on paper or if on computer that computer was only accessible to staff. In the case of my county's library system if someone wanted my checkout history they would have to send someone to the library and go through all the books on the shelves looking at the checkout cards to see if my name and library card number were there. Generally no one would be that interested in most of us. Unless they had a strong reason to specifically be interested in me it was not worth the effort, and generally if I was doing something that would likely cause someone to take such a strong interest I'd know it and could avoid doing things that left those records. Nowadays, with public records on networked computers accessible via the internet, indexed and cross referenced and archived for eternity, so that anyone who has even a fleeting interest for any random reason in you can quickly and easily find it all, you have to operate as if everyone you draw even the slightest attention from might look everything up. Another example would be newspapers. As far as I know my name and photo have been published in newspapers twice. It is remotely possible that the second time could be found via an online search, but I'm pretty sure the first time could only now be found by going to the newspaper in question and going through their old microfiche archives in person. Neither of these were for bad things, but suppose that first time was something bad. It only made the local news, so all I'd have to do is move somewhere else and I could have a fresh start. Maybe I would have to avoid jobs that require a stringent enough background check to send investigators to scour the newspaper archives of every past place I've lived, but aside from that my mistake could stay in my past. Nowadays your past mistakes if they get into the public record can follow you for the rest of your life unless you do a complete identity change. So now we have to be very careful to make sure nothing that might be seen as mistake (by today's standards or any future standards over the rest of your life!) gets into the record in the first place.
sohkamyung 5y ago
Similarly, passports are also now mostly scanned at immigration and not stamped any more. I wonder if people feel a similar loss at being unable to connect to foreign places they may have once visited.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  In most countries the immigration officer will still stamp your passport if you request it.
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  That is an interesting statement because I am not sure I recall any country recently that did not stamp my passport. I guess it is not stamped if and where you are able to use the automated kiosks, but that is generally only my own country and perhaps a couple of others.
  - sohkamyung 5y ago
    Singapore does not stamp passports upon exit, for example [2]. Here's a list from 2017 of other countries that don't stamp passports upon entry [1]. [1] https://travelupdate.com/countries-do-not-issue-a-passport-stamp-upon-entry/ https://travelupdate.com/countries-do-not-issue-a-passport-s... [2] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/passport-stamps-no-longer-needed-to-exit-singapore https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/passport-stamps-no-lo...
lordnacho 5y ago
What also happened back in the day was you'd get a history of your school in the back pages of the library books. You'd see names of people a year or two above that you might know, then their elder siblings, then names that might have left some art in the halls, or they are on a leavers' wall from a long time ago.
dotancohen 5y ago
> I once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. I suppose the modern version would be to see three or even four digits at the end of a hit counter on a webpage, but I haven't even seen a hitcounter in maybe two decades.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  On reflection, I've got a better modern analogy. I filed KDE bug number 200000: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200000 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200000

cableshaft 5y ago

I agree, I always got a kick out of that. Always interesting to see when someone thought it was interesting enough to check out last.

Archelaos 5y ago

I have had the opposite experience: I once borrowed a more than 100 year old edition of U.S. Grant's autobiography from the university library. There were some pencil notes on the first pages, but I had to cut open the last hundred pages. Apparently, no one has read the book in its entirety in more than a century.

onemoresoop 5y ago

I remember that too. One could infer some useful information from those dates alone. Similarly, it just dawned upon me how useful the dislike counter from youtube was to me, I was drawing some metrics from it that I no longer can. The like counter really has no value without the dislike one IMO.

lettergram 5y ago
You’d have to look at like vs view ratios. But I agree, the dislike button made that far easier. Unfortunately, the regime didn’t like the button lol
- Talanes 5y ago
  But the majority of people aren't hitting anything, so now you're lumping in disinterest in ratings with active dislike.
  - anon9001 5y ago
    I think someone should add a "ratio" field via extension. It'd be a useful addition to https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ which is already modifying the youtube UI.
JasonCannon 5y ago
Now you need to determine if you like the video for what it is, instead of relying on the masses to tell you if you dislike the video. Or, you know, just read the comments.
- Lhiw 5y ago
  I was using it to determine of I was being unfair in my critique. If nobody else is disliking it maybe my biases are effecting my perception. Not everything is confirmation bias. Some people use social feedback to regulate themselves into not being total weirdos.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I have upvoted your comment, but feel the need to inform you that I am, in fact, a total weirdo. So, take that as you will.
- tartoran 5y ago
  I always determined whether I liked a video for what it was anyway, I never disliked a video if other people disliked it. But for me the like dislike ratio helped avoid scams. I feel that scammers are empowered by having only the like counter display

iancmceachern 5y ago

I once bought a used book for a family member for their birthday. It turned out to be an old library book and the card within was stamped with the last date the book was checked out, which was on their birth date, down to even the correct year.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thechao 5y ago

Without naming a place, a friend of mine checked out a copy of the parliamentary proceedings (from the UK) of the House of Lords from the early 19th c. They were the only one to have ever checked any of these books out. Mostly boring, but the HoL could get up to funny stuff when they were bored or irritating each other. My only gripe was that they highlighted their favorite bits in yellow. I mean — come on! Their counterargument was that, in the year 2150, when the next person checks out the proceedings, they'd know where the good parts were.

papandada 5y ago
That's also why on the bus I turn my music up really loud for the good songs
dingusbingus 5y ago
As a non-native english speaker this post confuses me a lot, did the HoL highlight their own favourite bits? Was it a group of friends that checked out the proceedings?
- judge2020 5y ago
  It's a bit confusing (this is commonly called playing the pronoun game, where pronouns are used without context on what they're referring to), but they mean that their friend is the one highlighting good parts in the book.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    I've never heard "the pronoun game" but I know I have a habit of over-writing to avoid it. (Or maybe I'm writing just enough.)
    - tzs 5y ago
      OT: this is completely off topic, but I'd kind of like to see an effort to take advantage of the current reexamination that is taking place in some circles over the issue of gendered pronouns to just fix the whole damn pronoun system. We need a set of pronouns, which I'll call P1, P2, P3, ... for now to avoid having to think of names for them, that are based on position. P1 refers to the first thing in the sentence that could be referred to by a pronoun, P2 refers to the second thing in the sentence that could be referred to by a pronoun, and so on. We also might need a set of pronouns N1, N2, ... that refer to the last thing before the sentence that could take a pronoun, the next to last thing before the sentence that can take a pronoun, and so on.

Causality1 5y ago

Many of the books in my library came from used library book sales, especially those I read as a child. When I read them again I always look at the checkout dates and wonder about those people, whether the book had the same impact on their lives it had on mine decades later.

userbinator 5y ago

I've "borrowed" books from archive.org that had their last borrower's date in the late 19th/early 20th century, similarly visible from the log affixed inside the cover --- which the archive.org scanners clearly preserved. When I come across such a book I also ponder who the last borrower was.

tzs 5y ago

Did they just stamp the dates or did they also stamp names? The library system were I grew up stamped both. The library cards had your name and library card number in raised reversed lettering. When you checked out a book the librarian took the card from the book and your library card and put it in a device that used the raise lettering to print your name and card number on the card from the book. The newly stamped card got filed away somewhere, and they put a card in the book that had the due date stamped on it. When the book's card got filled up with checkouts on both sides, they'd replace it with a new card.

lambertsimnel 5y ago
Maybe stamping names has fallen out of fashion for data protection reasons. I seem to recall disquiet about the US federal government's access to library records under the George W Bush administration. Maybe some people would be similarly unhappy with their fellow library users knowing which books they'd borrowed. On a similar note, my university used to operate an alumni directory (open to all alumni), and the local paper used to publish the names of all graduates. Both were stopped without any stated reason, but I wonder whether they were judged to violate data protection law or implicated in harassment.
- tzs 5y ago
  It's almost certainly due to data protection. That was much less of a concern before the end of the last century, because access to public records was generally much more work than it is now. Records were usually either only on paper or if on computer that computer was only accessible to staff. In the case of my county's library system if someone wanted my checkout history they would have to send someone to the library and go through all the books on the shelves looking at the checkout cards to see if my name and library card number were there. Generally no one would be that interested in most of us. Unless they had a strong reason to specifically be interested in me it was not worth the effort, and generally if I was doing something that would likely cause someone to take such a strong interest I'd know it and could avoid doing things that left those records. Nowadays, with public records on networked computers accessible via the internet, indexed and cross referenced and archived for eternity, so that anyone who has even a fleeting interest for any random reason in you can quickly and easily find it all, you have to operate as if everyone you draw even the slightest attention from might look everything up. Another example would be newspapers. As far as I know my name and photo have been published in newspapers twice. It is remotely possible that the second time could be found via an online search, but I'm pretty sure the first time could only now be found by going to the newspaper in question and going through their old microfiche archives in person. Neither of these were for bad things, but suppose that first time was something bad. It only made the local news, so all I'd have to do is move somewhere else and I could have a fresh start. Maybe I would have to avoid jobs that require a stringent enough background check to send investigators to scour the newspaper archives of every past place I've lived, but aside from that my mistake could stay in my past. Nowadays your past mistakes if they get into the public record can follow you for the rest of your life unless you do a complete identity change. So now we have to be very careful to make sure nothing that might be seen as mistake (by today's standards or any future standards over the rest of your life!) gets into the record in the first place.

sohkamyung 5y ago

Similarly, passports are also now mostly scanned at immigration and not stamped any more. I wonder if people feel a similar loss at being unable to connect to foreign places they may have once visited.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
In most countries the immigration officer will still stamp your passport if you request it.
goodcanadian 5y ago
That is an interesting statement because I am not sure I recall any country recently that did not stamp my passport. I guess it is not stamped if and where you are able to use the automated kiosks, but that is generally only my own country and perhaps a couple of others.
- sohkamyung 5y ago
  Singapore does not stamp passports upon exit, for example [2]. Here's a list from 2017 of other countries that don't stamp passports upon entry [1]. [1] https://travelupdate.com/countries-do-not-issue-a-passport-stamp-upon-entry/ https://travelupdate.com/countries-do-not-issue-a-passport-s... [2] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/passport-stamps-no-longer-needed-to-exit-singapore https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/passport-stamps-no-lo...

lordnacho 5y ago

What also happened back in the day was you'd get a history of your school in the back pages of the library books. You'd see names of people a year or two above that you might know, then their elder siblings, then names that might have left some art in the halls, or they are on a leavers' wall from a long time ago.

dotancohen 5y ago

> I once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. I suppose the modern version would be to see three or even four digits at the end of a hit counter on a webpage, but I haven't even seen a hitcounter in maybe two decades.

dotancohen 5y ago
On reflection, I've got a better modern analogy. I filed KDE bug number 200000: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200000 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200000