3 ms·

> the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable Not really. The paper's acidic, which means that the paper degrades to the point of not being usab

> the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable Not really. The paper's acidic, which means that the paper degrades to the point of not being usable without a huge amount of intervention. I have trade paperbacks which are under 20 years old whose paper are downright brittle. > but libraries canno Which is, I hate to say, irrelevant to the discussion of preserving digital documents. Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not.

wizzwizz4 4y ago
> Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not. Libraries are how humanity at large preserves documents! Sure, I might have a wonderful collection of books on my hard drive, but other than me (and whoever knows about my torrents), nobody's benefiting from that; whereas everyone with a local library knows (at least, in theory) that they can find information there. When I kick the bucket, what happens to my hard drive? If somebody knew about it and cared enough, they might subsume its contents into their collection; and then the information would be safe for another… few decades? To quote Randall Munroe (https://xkcd.com/1909/ https://xkcd.com/1909/ title text): > I spent a long time thinking about how to design a system for long-term organization and storage of subject-specific informational resources without needing ongoing work from the experts who created them, only to realized I'd just reinvented libraries.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Historically, yes. Today? No. The internet has, in many ways, supplanted it. And where Libraries are hobbled by following the laws, the internet community has found ways around this particular damage. And that's cool. Now then, should Libraries be getting shafted like this? Fuck no. Can any actions I take - short of running for office and making my way up to the federal government in charge of interstate commerce - effect that? Also, sadly, no. I will continue to support librarians seeking change while facing reality.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    > The internet has, in many ways, supplanted it. The internet is big and sprawling. It's easy to prune, by accident or malice. Think of how much of the web goes through Cloudflare! Think of how much we rely on the Internet Archive; if that went down, where would we be? Libraries, on the other hand, are decentralised, redundant, curated, indexed, and maintained against both bitrot and link rot. We could make the internet like this. In fact, there are organisations that do so! But there's a reason so many of those organisations call themselves libraries.
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      Great point about if the internet archive went down. Every single one of us on this site unless in poverty should consider donating to the IA. I’ve just changed my monthly donation from Wikipedia to IA.
      - wizzwizz4 4y ago
        Supporting the Internet Archive is very much worth doing – but we also need a parallel effort to archive the Internet Archive. There are other ways for it to go down than just "we ran out of money". (Then again, I don't know that a parallel effort exists; Archive Team were doing one a few years back, but I think that's stopped. So donating to IA is still your best bet, here.)
  - Retric 4y ago
    The internet is insanely prone to losing stuff. What percentage of the first 10,000 YouTube videos from 2005 do you think are still accessible? With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around. You can find old stuff due to internet archive and that’s about it. Making the internet basically a giant single point of failure in practice.
    - chmod775 4y ago
      > With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around. On YouTube there are around 20 different labels claiming to own the copyright to a recording of the Red Army Choir singing the Soviet national anthem more than 50 years ago. UMG has already decided you're not allowed to embed it on some other sites. Additionally, due to licensing issues, music "owned" by certain labels hasn't been/is not available in the certain countries.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Horses were how humanity at large moves from point A to B.
- troupe 4y ago
  > When I kick the bucket, what happens to my hard drive? Well you could write a will saying that you want it to be released to the public and then have someone come along and say, "they didn't really mean it." http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity
  - falcolas 4y ago
    The prior version is still available, though? And the caveat "the wishes that Aaron had in 2003 do not necessarily correspond with those that he had in 2013" is a far cry from "they didn't really mean it", especially when the old version is still available (encoded as data on the existing page).
    - troupe 4y ago
      I guess I'm seeing it more as a will where you state what you want to have happen after you die. So they are saying that what he wrote in 2003, he didn't mean in 2013. I'll agree it is a far cry in wording, but seems similar in intent. Maybe they are saying that he forgot he had published that page. Maybe there was something he wrote or told someone that contradicted what he had published. All we have to go off of was his digital will for his hard drives.
munk-a 4y ago
Well, I think libraries getting shafted is humanity at large getting shafted. We've gone so far into monetization and privatization that academic knowledge is now gate kept, bartered and sold - I know that a century ago there would be other gate keeping issues around gender and skin color but while we've made good progress on those fronts we've also allowed both research and literature to become much more commoditized and that is bad for society as a whole.
- falcolas 4y ago
  > I think libraries getting shafted is humanity at large getting shafted. I agree, mostly. But humanity is, thankfully, routing around that damage while the librarians and politicians fight that battle.
midoridensha 4y ago
>Not really. The paper's acidic, which means that the paper degrades to the point of not being usable without a huge amount of intervention. I have trade paperbacks which are under 20 years old whose paper are downright brittle. I thought modern books were made with acid-free paper? I know this is a huge problem for books made in, for instance, the 1970s. Is it only the nicer books that are made with acid-free paper?
- falcolas 4y ago
  Sure. Nicer - more expensive - books. Not those whose costs on par with ebooks typically.
- codazoda 4y ago
  Most paper used commercially is acid free, due to the manufacturing process. I dunno if books use some other, cheaper paper, but it seems unlikely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-free_paper https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-free_paper
- jahewson 4y ago
  My 10 year old paperbacks are turning yellow, so I guess not.
schiffern 4y ago
> Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not. I'm picturing someone in the crowd saying this while the Library of Alexandria burns.
- falcolas 4y ago
  And that's why it's great that the internet exists. A very large number of libraries can burn and no knowledge will be lost. Just copies of that knowledge. Those Alexandrians' should have focused more on their tech game. :)
  - schiffern 4y ago
    Alexandria wasn't the only library in its day, obviously. Sometimes you "only" lose redundancy. But occasionally a lost library (or digital archive) contains unique content, so statistically the survival rate still trends toward zero. How is knowledge lost? "Slowly at first, then all at once."
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    What will happen to that digital knowledge if there is no electricity in the world for like… twenty years? I am not even thinking about “twenty generations”.
    - blackoil 4y ago
      We'll be burning paper books as fuel.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      > if there is no electricity in the world Then humanity will have bigger problems, such as survival. Our world isn't made for survival without electricity.
PaulHoule 4y ago
My impression is that trade paperbacks really suck. Frequently the bindings crack when you open them for the first time. Mass-market paperbacks are not great but they have some minimum level of quality that is not certain in trade paperbacks.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I believe you have that backwards. Mass-market paperbacks are the bottom of the barrel, trade paperbacks are the better version.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    No, I mean what I say. Mass market paperbacks are at a low standard but it is a standard. They are great to put in a backpack because of small size. A good trade paperback is better than any mass market paperback but trade paperbacks come in various sizes and designs and many of them have serious defects when manufactured.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      Ah, I see where the size standardization could be valuable. I was thinking only of quality, and everything I've read (and I don't mean I just went to wikipedia ;-), though they do actually agree) suggested that a trade paperback was closer to a paper bound version of the original hardback, up to and including the size and everything, and built consistently to a higher standard than a mass market version.
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        Some of them are good but some of them split at the back with the slightest bit of handling. Self-published trade paperbacks are particularly bad. As a category I don’t like them though I have plenty of them. My favorite kind of sci-fi book to collect these days are small hardcovers but for nonfiction I take what I can get.

wizzwizz4 4y ago

> Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not. Libraries are how humanity at large preserves documents! Sure, I might have a wonderful collection of books on my hard drive, but other than me (and whoever knows about my torrents), nobody's benefiting from that; whereas everyone with a local library knows (at least, in theory) that they can find information there. When I kick the bucket, what happens to my hard drive? If somebody knew about it and cared enough, they might subsume its contents into their collection; and then the information would be safe for another… few decades? To quote Randall Munroe (https://xkcd.com/1909/ https://xkcd.com/1909/ title text): > I spent a long time thinking about how to design a system for long-term organization and storage of subject-specific informational resources without needing ongoing work from the experts who created them, only to realized I'd just reinvented libraries.

falcolas 4y ago
Historically, yes. Today? No. The internet has, in many ways, supplanted it. And where Libraries are hobbled by following the laws, the internet community has found ways around this particular damage. And that's cool. Now then, should Libraries be getting shafted like this? Fuck no. Can any actions I take - short of running for office and making my way up to the federal government in charge of interstate commerce - effect that? Also, sadly, no. I will continue to support librarians seeking change while facing reality.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > The internet has, in many ways, supplanted it. The internet is big and sprawling. It's easy to prune, by accident or malice. Think of how much of the web goes through Cloudflare! Think of how much we rely on the Internet Archive; if that went down, where would we be? Libraries, on the other hand, are decentralised, redundant, curated, indexed, and maintained against both bitrot and link rot. We could make the internet like this. In fact, there are organisations that do so! But there's a reason so many of those organisations call themselves libraries.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Great point about if the internet archive went down. Every single one of us on this site unless in poverty should consider donating to the IA. I’ve just changed my monthly donation from Wikipedia to IA.
    - wizzwizz4 4y ago
      Supporting the Internet Archive is very much worth doing – but we also need a parallel effort to archive the Internet Archive. There are other ways for it to go down than just "we ran out of money". (Then again, I don't know that a parallel effort exists; Archive Team were doing one a few years back, but I think that's stopped. So donating to IA is still your best bet, here.)
- Retric 4y ago
  The internet is insanely prone to losing stuff. What percentage of the first 10,000 YouTube videos from 2005 do you think are still accessible? With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around. You can find old stuff due to internet archive and that’s about it. Making the internet basically a giant single point of failure in practice.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    > With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around. On YouTube there are around 20 different labels claiming to own the copyright to a recording of the Red Army Choir singing the Soviet national anthem more than 50 years ago. UMG has already decided you're not allowed to embed it on some other sites. Additionally, due to licensing issues, music "owned" by certain labels hasn't been/is not available in the certain countries.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
Horses were how humanity at large moves from point A to B.
troupe 4y ago
> When I kick the bucket, what happens to my hard drive? Well you could write a will saying that you want it to be released to the public and then have someone come along and say, "they didn't really mean it." http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity
- falcolas 4y ago
  The prior version is still available, though? And the caveat "the wishes that Aaron had in 2003 do not necessarily correspond with those that he had in 2013" is a far cry from "they didn't really mean it", especially when the old version is still available (encoded as data on the existing page).
  - troupe 4y ago
    I guess I'm seeing it more as a will where you state what you want to have happen after you die. So they are saying that what he wrote in 2003, he didn't mean in 2013. I'll agree it is a far cry in wording, but seems similar in intent. Maybe they are saying that he forgot he had published that page. Maybe there was something he wrote or told someone that contradicted what he had published. All we have to go off of was his digital will for his hard drives.

munk-a 4y ago

Well, I think libraries getting shafted is humanity at large getting shafted. We've gone so far into monetization and privatization that academic knowledge is now gate kept, bartered and sold - I know that a century ago there would be other gate keeping issues around gender and skin color but while we've made good progress on those fronts we've also allowed both research and literature to become much more commoditized and that is bad for society as a whole.

falcolas 4y ago
> I think libraries getting shafted is humanity at large getting shafted. I agree, mostly. But humanity is, thankfully, routing around that damage while the librarians and politicians fight that battle.

midoridensha 4y ago

>Not really. The paper's acidic, which means that the paper degrades to the point of not being usable without a huge amount of intervention. I have trade paperbacks which are under 20 years old whose paper are downright brittle. I thought modern books were made with acid-free paper? I know this is a huge problem for books made in, for instance, the 1970s. Is it only the nicer books that are made with acid-free paper?

falcolas 4y ago
Sure. Nicer - more expensive - books. Not those whose costs on par with ebooks typically.
codazoda 4y ago
Most paper used commercially is acid free, due to the manufacturing process. I dunno if books use some other, cheaper paper, but it seems unlikely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-free_paper https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-free_paper
jahewson 4y ago
My 10 year old paperbacks are turning yellow, so I guess not.

schiffern 4y ago

> Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not. I'm picturing someone in the crowd saying this while the Library of Alexandria burns.

falcolas 4y ago
And that's why it's great that the internet exists. A very large number of libraries can burn and no knowledge will be lost. Just copies of that knowledge. Those Alexandrians' should have focused more on their tech game. :)
- schiffern 4y ago
  Alexandria wasn't the only library in its day, obviously. Sometimes you "only" lose redundancy. But occasionally a lost library (or digital archive) contains unique content, so statistically the survival rate still trends toward zero. How is knowledge lost? "Slowly at first, then all at once."
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  What will happen to that digital knowledge if there is no electricity in the world for like… twenty years? I am not even thinking about “twenty generations”.
  - blackoil 4y ago
    We'll be burning paper books as fuel.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > if there is no electricity in the world Then humanity will have bigger problems, such as survival. Our world isn't made for survival without electricity.

PaulHoule 4y ago

My impression is that trade paperbacks really suck. Frequently the bindings crack when you open them for the first time. Mass-market paperbacks are not great but they have some minimum level of quality that is not certain in trade paperbacks.

rootusrootus 4y ago
I believe you have that backwards. Mass-market paperbacks are the bottom of the barrel, trade paperbacks are the better version.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  No, I mean what I say. Mass market paperbacks are at a low standard but it is a standard. They are great to put in a backpack because of small size. A good trade paperback is better than any mass market paperback but trade paperbacks come in various sizes and designs and many of them have serious defects when manufactured.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Ah, I see where the size standardization could be valuable. I was thinking only of quality, and everything I've read (and I don't mean I just went to wikipedia ;-), though they do actually agree) suggested that a trade paperback was closer to a paper bound version of the original hardback, up to and including the size and everything, and built consistently to a higher standard than a mass market version.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      Some of them are good but some of them split at the back with the slightest bit of handling. Self-published trade paperbacks are particularly bad. As a category I don’t like them though I have plenty of them. My favorite kind of sci-fi book to collect these days are small hardcovers but for nonfiction I take what I can get.