8 ms·

Twilight of the Libraries: What Gets Lost When Books Go Off-Site and Online (2022)

67 points by laurex 4y ago

blakesterz 4y ago
This story is from last summer, but it's still as relevant as ever. Things like this have been happening for a long time in libraries. This is from last month: Northern Vermont University, Castleton University, and Vermont Technical College are consolidating into one university, Vermont State University, by July 1st. As part of the consolidation, administrators announced they will be donating most of the library’s physical collection in favor of a digital-only library and repurposing the library building. https://bookriot.com/vermont-state-university-digital-only-library/ https://bookriot.com/vermont-state-university-digital-only-l...
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Meanwhile, in my city, the public library is more popular than ever on any metric.
crazygringo 4y ago
I don't get this article -- I do a lot of academic research and love online materials. When I have to access a book that is physical only, half an entire afternoon gets wasted. Online books are orders of magnitude faster to get, to search within, and you can highlight and annotate to your heart's delight. Everyone agrees rare books and manuscripts need to be kept, which the article admits, so that's not an issue. So ultimately the question is "regular books" and the crux of the article's argument seems to be: > One glaring problem with libraries’ increasing their reliance on digital texts is the relatively large number of errors in the Google Books corpus. As archivist Paul Conway has shown, “the imperfection of digital surrogates is an obvious and nearly ubiquitous feature of Google Books.” But, even overlooking the outright errors in the scanned pages, my point is that “content”—what books contain—goes far beyond words in a particular order and beyond page images of a single representative copy. As we detach texts from books, we enable a certain range of procedures while disabling others. Online editions can offer up texts for investigation and discovery, but they are not replacements for the material they represent. This makes no sense to me. I've never seen an "error" in a Google Books page image. The OCR for sure, but who cares, and that can always be redone. And in terms of "enabling a certain range of procedures while disabling others", online enables a ton, while I'm at a total loss of what is "disabled". Again -- for rare books and manuscripts, of course. A beautiful gilt binding, absolutely. But for just your everyday workhorse books that make up 99+% of a library's content... I just totally and utterly fail to see anything being lost at all. (And so many original covers/bindings are replaced with generic library covers/bindings when acquired, so it's not even that.)
- ravagat 4y ago
  I agree that the article lacked structure. I'm curious do you still do research at your local libraries? As in physically go out to the library even if you're still using online/digital materials there.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  > The OCR for sure, but who cares, and that can always be redone. And that's only an issue at all for books which were scanned from print copies. Books which were uploaded in digital formats by the publisher won't have that issue.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  And with the GPTs of the world, OCR is a vanishing issue.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    You know an OCR with a Statistical Language Model acting as text plausibility checker?
    - hewlett 4y ago
      They probably mean the use of GPTs to correct OCR errors
      - mdp2021 4y ago
        That is what I meant. But you have to integrate the subsystems properly, and I am not aware of an engine that does it.
        xen2xen1 4y ago
        Indeed, that is part assumption on my part the OCR will get better with a GPT like setup, but, as I said on another comment, I have trouble believing OCR won't be one of the better applications, as "is this an A" is much more straightforward than most of what GPTs have been doing.
HEmanZ 4y ago
I think the balance should be something like: - most libraries going the “modern” route the author doesn’t like, because that’s what most people really need from a library - some libraries keeping the “old school” approach for aesthetic and conservation reasons - hopefully one or two “super preserver” libraries that are stockpiling and preserving books just to be an exhaustive source of in case e.g the collapse of civilization or the occasional importance of some physical copy to future researchers. Does anyone know if #3 is happening? I’m totally fine with this, it seems the only practical approach going forward. And I say this as someone who loves physical books and probably owns more than I’ll ever be able to read (over 10k at this point, I have a problem).
- Swizec 4y ago
  Aren't the various national libraries of the world attempting to do #3? If I remember high school correctly, the idea of those libraries is to keep at least 1 copy of every book published in that nation.
- GoodbyeMrChips 4y ago
  [dead]
- gpm 4y ago
  #3 sounds like a reference library and/or a rare books library.
- Burper 4y ago
  > Does anyone know if #3 is happening? I'd like to think denizens of HN would be aware of the existence of legal deposit libraries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Welcome Burper. Legal deposit libraries are relatively rare - they can be e.g. one every 10 or 50 mil ppl, and sometimes the mandated time span of retention can be very limited. It is not granted that this practice will increase instead of decreasing or transforming.
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kmeisthax 4y ago
Keep in mind there's one other problem with digitization: a lack of ownership. The law does not recognize any concept of digital sale: all digital copies are licensed property of the publisher[0], and it is not possible to legally sell them. This gives publishers the ability to retroactively wipe libraries' catalogs on the basis that they own them. Yes, this isn't a problem with public domain works; but those have bigger preservation problems. DRM is a self-inflicted wound. [0] I resisted the urge to write "author" here as American copyright is assignable. It shouldn't be, because this assignability is usually demanded up-front by publishers.
- thomaslangston 4y ago
  > This gives publishers the ability to retroactively wipe libraries' catalogs on the basis that they own them. This doesn't have to be true. We could have licenses that are perpetual.
- User23 4y ago
  > The law does not recognize any concept of digital sale The law does recognize a digital sale, including the right to resell and make archival copies. It turns out you can't trust the publisher's lawyers to give you good legal advice. For example you don't need a license to run software you have legally acquired a copy of. Black letter law already gives you that right in the copyright act[1]. [1] https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Capitol Records v. ReDigi says otherwise. In this case, a company called ReDigi claimed to have a way to digitally resell files without "copying" them. They even engineered their software to progressively delete the file on the seller's computer as bits are copied to the buyer. The courts rejected that argument, because the bits are still not moved. They are just copied and deleted very quickly. Even if the file isn't in "two places at once", shredding the original and replacing it with a copy is still copyright infringement. In copyright law, 1 + -1 != 0 . I will give you that the RAM Copy Doctrine[0] is a dead letter when it comes to mere execution of a computer program. But let's look at the actual black-letter law you're citing: 17 USC 117(b). It does not say that you can always sell computer programs, it just says that if you can sell them, then any backup or archival copies you make have to be sold (or destroyed) along with the original. Nothing in here actually mandates that originals have to be legally transferable. In the realm of digital goods, the way that you acquire software is with a license agreement - because at the very least the basic act of digitally delivering you the goods requires some kind of contractual relationship between you and the service selling you the product. That provides enough consideration for them to start taking rights away, because courts let you contract away fair use or first sale in exchange for other rights[1]. So you don't have a basis to sell the program in question, because the agreement under which the product is delivered says you promise not to sell the program. In the physical world this is harder to argue because most stores do not actually make you sign things in order to buy computer programs. There are already very well established rules about how sales work on physical goods in absence of a contractual agreement, too. You can use shrinkwrap licensing and there are court cases that respect that, but that's something the publishers had to fight tooth and nail in order to get. Digital was born with handcuffs. For what it's worth, the Internet Archive is fighting in court with a bunch of book publishers to change this by establishing a legal basis for unlicensed digital lending. I do not expect them to win, even though I want them to win. The big hurdle with this is, again, that the courts will not allow you to make use of first sale digitally even if you slap DRM on the process. [0] The result of MAI Systems Corp v. Peak Computer Inc; and legally binding in the 9th Circuit. Under this doctrine, any copy made even just turning on the computer or loading a program in memory in order to execute it is an infringement of the copyright owner. [1] This is also part of the reason why D&D's Open Gaming License was an utter piece of trash, even before they made it worse. It provided little to no rights in exchange for you dropping your fair use rights in exchange.
NameGenerator1 4y ago
What’s to keep services that supply digitized material from raising their rates once libraries has signed up?
- orcajerk 4y ago
  Nothing. Digital is already more expensive because the digital publishers claim a physical book checked out x number of times needs replacing so if a digital book is checked out x number of times, the library is charged full price again. I rarely saw books checked out that many times to require a physically new copy due to wear and tear - libraries generally had staff that could repair the books.
ravagat 4y ago
Interesting read but this has happened before and is another case of technological innovation and lack of adaptability. I am a library enthusiast. I advocate for personal/private library of your own and public libraries of your community. I also like the larger private libraries of individuals/organizations who open up to the public and wish more people took advantage of these. I think libraries are and will always be an integral part of daily life. Right now, the issues seem to be stemmed from the failure of maintenance. And I mean the whole system itself and all related systems. Libraries themselves continue to lower their threshold for what maintenance is upheld- book maintenance, infrastructure maintenance (the handling, filing, recordkeeping, etc.), technological maintenance (many libraries have digitization efforts that have spanned decades but most I've encountered seem to disregard redigitization which is important to gain better quality, OCR capability, and future proofing for better systemization), organizational maintenance (libraries' administrative, legal, etc.)-- since there are a lot of layers and abstractions to these libraries. They are their own ecosystems. Some have become very complicated and hence their organizations have grown. A part of this failure of maintenance is the lack in advocation of stewardship. Libraries should have long-term outlooks and goals and a lot of controversies and issues of recent years seem to really highlight this lack of long-term ability of maintenance with stewardship. I may be rambling and have shared concerns with my local librarians and IT individuals involved with libraries. I'm curious if anyone else has had similar conclusions.

67 points by laurex 4y ago

This story is from last summer, but it's still as relevant as ever. Things like this have been happening for a long time in libraries. This is from last month: Northern Vermont University, Castleton University, and Vermont Technical College are consolidating into one university, Vermont State University, by July 1st. As part of the consolidation, administrators announced they will be donating most of the library’s physical collection in favor of a digital-only library and repurposing the library building. https://bookriot.com/vermont-state-university-digital-only-library/ https://bookriot.com/vermont-state-university-digital-only-l...

Spooky23 4y ago
Meanwhile, in my city, the public library is more popular than ever on any metric.

crazygringo 4y ago

I don't get this article -- I do a lot of academic research and love online materials. When I have to access a book that is physical only, half an entire afternoon gets wasted. Online books are orders of magnitude faster to get, to search within, and you can highlight and annotate to your heart's delight. Everyone agrees rare books and manuscripts need to be kept, which the article admits, so that's not an issue. So ultimately the question is "regular books" and the crux of the article's argument seems to be: > One glaring problem with libraries’ increasing their reliance on digital texts is the relatively large number of errors in the Google Books corpus. As archivist Paul Conway has shown, “the imperfection of digital surrogates is an obvious and nearly ubiquitous feature of Google Books.” But, even overlooking the outright errors in the scanned pages, my point is that “content”—what books contain—goes far beyond words in a particular order and beyond page images of a single representative copy. As we detach texts from books, we enable a certain range of procedures while disabling others. Online editions can offer up texts for investigation and discovery, but they are not replacements for the material they represent. This makes no sense to me. I've never seen an "error" in a Google Books page image. The OCR for sure, but who cares, and that can always be redone. And in terms of "enabling a certain range of procedures while disabling others", online enables a ton, while I'm at a total loss of what is "disabled". Again -- for rare books and manuscripts, of course. A beautiful gilt binding, absolutely. But for just your everyday workhorse books that make up 99+% of a library's content... I just totally and utterly fail to see anything being lost at all. (And so many original covers/bindings are replaced with generic library covers/bindings when acquired, so it's not even that.)

ravagat 4y ago
I agree that the article lacked structure. I'm curious do you still do research at your local libraries? As in physically go out to the library even if you're still using online/digital materials there.
duskwuff 4y ago
> The OCR for sure, but who cares, and that can always be redone. And that's only an issue at all for books which were scanned from print copies. Books which were uploaded in digital formats by the publisher won't have that issue.
xen2xen1 4y ago
And with the GPTs of the world, OCR is a vanishing issue.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  You know an OCR with a Statistical Language Model acting as text plausibility checker?
  - hewlett 4y ago
    They probably mean the use of GPTs to correct OCR errors
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      That is what I meant. But you have to integrate the subsystems properly, and I am not aware of an engine that does it.
      - xen2xen1 4y ago
        Indeed, that is part assumption on my part the OCR will get better with a GPT like setup, but, as I said on another comment, I have trouble believing OCR won't be one of the better applications, as "is this an A" is much more straightforward than most of what GPTs have been doing.

HEmanZ 4y ago

I think the balance should be something like: - most libraries going the “modern” route the author doesn’t like, because that’s what most people really need from a library - some libraries keeping the “old school” approach for aesthetic and conservation reasons - hopefully one or two “super preserver” libraries that are stockpiling and preserving books just to be an exhaustive source of in case e.g the collapse of civilization or the occasional importance of some physical copy to future researchers. Does anyone know if #3 is happening? I’m totally fine with this, it seems the only practical approach going forward. And I say this as someone who loves physical books and probably owns more than I’ll ever be able to read (over 10k at this point, I have a problem).

Swizec 4y ago
Aren't the various national libraries of the world attempting to do #3? If I remember high school correctly, the idea of those libraries is to keep at least 1 copy of every book published in that nation.
GoodbyeMrChips 4y ago
[dead]
gpm 4y ago
#3 sounds like a reference library and/or a rare books library.
Burper 4y ago
> Does anyone know if #3 is happening? I'd like to think denizens of HN would be aware of the existence of legal deposit libraries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Welcome Burper. Legal deposit libraries are relatively rare - they can be e.g. one every 10 or 50 mil ppl, and sometimes the mandated time span of retention can be very limited. It is not granted that this practice will increase instead of decreasing or transforming.

newaccount2021 4y ago

[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kmeisthax 4y ago

Keep in mind there's one other problem with digitization: a lack of ownership. The law does not recognize any concept of digital sale: all digital copies are licensed property of the publisher[0], and it is not possible to legally sell them. This gives publishers the ability to retroactively wipe libraries' catalogs on the basis that they own them. Yes, this isn't a problem with public domain works; but those have bigger preservation problems. DRM is a self-inflicted wound. [0] I resisted the urge to write "author" here as American copyright is assignable. It shouldn't be, because this assignability is usually demanded up-front by publishers.

thomaslangston 4y ago
> This gives publishers the ability to retroactively wipe libraries' catalogs on the basis that they own them. This doesn't have to be true. We could have licenses that are perpetual.
User23 4y ago
> The law does not recognize any concept of digital sale The law does recognize a digital sale, including the right to resell and make archival copies. It turns out you can't trust the publisher's lawyers to give you good legal advice. For example you don't need a license to run software you have legally acquired a copy of. Black letter law already gives you that right in the copyright act[1]. [1] https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Capitol Records v. ReDigi says otherwise. In this case, a company called ReDigi claimed to have a way to digitally resell files without "copying" them. They even engineered their software to progressively delete the file on the seller's computer as bits are copied to the buyer. The courts rejected that argument, because the bits are still not moved. They are just copied and deleted very quickly. Even if the file isn't in "two places at once", shredding the original and replacing it with a copy is still copyright infringement. In copyright law, 1 + -1 != 0 . I will give you that the RAM Copy Doctrine[0] is a dead letter when it comes to mere execution of a computer program. But let's look at the actual black-letter law you're citing: 17 USC 117(b). It does not say that you can always sell computer programs, it just says that if you can sell them, then any backup or archival copies you make have to be sold (or destroyed) along with the original. Nothing in here actually mandates that originals have to be legally transferable. In the realm of digital goods, the way that you acquire software is with a license agreement - because at the very least the basic act of digitally delivering you the goods requires some kind of contractual relationship between you and the service selling you the product. That provides enough consideration for them to start taking rights away, because courts let you contract away fair use or first sale in exchange for other rights[1]. So you don't have a basis to sell the program in question, because the agreement under which the product is delivered says you promise not to sell the program. In the physical world this is harder to argue because most stores do not actually make you sign things in order to buy computer programs. There are already very well established rules about how sales work on physical goods in absence of a contractual agreement, too. You can use shrinkwrap licensing and there are court cases that respect that, but that's something the publishers had to fight tooth and nail in order to get. Digital was born with handcuffs. For what it's worth, the Internet Archive is fighting in court with a bunch of book publishers to change this by establishing a legal basis for unlicensed digital lending. I do not expect them to win, even though I want them to win. The big hurdle with this is, again, that the courts will not allow you to make use of first sale digitally even if you slap DRM on the process. [0] The result of MAI Systems Corp v. Peak Computer Inc; and legally binding in the 9th Circuit. Under this doctrine, any copy made even just turning on the computer or loading a program in memory in order to execute it is an infringement of the copyright owner. [1] This is also part of the reason why D&D's Open Gaming License was an utter piece of trash, even before they made it worse. It provided little to no rights in exchange for you dropping your fair use rights in exchange.

NameGenerator1 4y ago

What’s to keep services that supply digitized material from raising their rates once libraries has signed up?

orcajerk 4y ago
Nothing. Digital is already more expensive because the digital publishers claim a physical book checked out x number of times needs replacing so if a digital book is checked out x number of times, the library is charged full price again. I rarely saw books checked out that many times to require a physically new copy due to wear and tear - libraries generally had staff that could repair the books.

ravagat 4y ago

Interesting read but this has happened before and is another case of technological innovation and lack of adaptability. I am a library enthusiast. I advocate for personal/private library of your own and public libraries of your community. I also like the larger private libraries of individuals/organizations who open up to the public and wish more people took advantage of these. I think libraries are and will always be an integral part of daily life. Right now, the issues seem to be stemmed from the failure of maintenance. And I mean the whole system itself and all related systems. Libraries themselves continue to lower their threshold for what maintenance is upheld- book maintenance, infrastructure maintenance (the handling, filing, recordkeeping, etc.), technological maintenance (many libraries have digitization efforts that have spanned decades but most I've encountered seem to disregard redigitization which is important to gain better quality, OCR capability, and future proofing for better systemization), organizational maintenance (libraries' administrative, legal, etc.)-- since there are a lot of layers and abstractions to these libraries. They are their own ecosystems. Some have become very complicated and hence their organizations have grown. A part of this failure of maintenance is the lack in advocation of stewardship. Libraries should have long-term outlooks and goals and a lot of controversies and issues of recent years seem to really highlight this lack of long-term ability of maintenance with stewardship. I may be rambling and have shared concerns with my local librarians and IT individuals involved with libraries. I'm curious if anyone else has had similar conclusions.