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I think that really depends on the type of book. I've found the large PDFs to be by far the most reliable for books printed before the 20th century because - sa
by akiselev 4y ago
I think that really depends on the type of book. I've found the large PDFs to be by far the most reliable for books printed before the 20th century because - save for Google Books - no one's OCR is tuned for the kind of printing errors, age related wear and tear, and fonts used over the centuries.
Manuscripts (which are admittedly very niche) often have to be high resolution scans or photographs just to be readable, but zlib and libgen don't really have many of those.
- zozbot234 4y agoSurely books published before the 20th century are in the public domain by now, though?
- akiselev 4y agoThey are but someone has to be in possession of the book and go through the trouble of digitizing it. Usually it’s museums, libraries, and private collections and a variety of enthusiasts eventually upload from those sources to Zlib/libgen. Since no one cares about copyright there anyway it can be more complete in some genres than other central databases.