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Libraries are funded by the government. They've been diligently scanning books for decades but nobody has had even the slightest interest in that until their fa
by Yeul 2y ago
Libraries are funded by the government. They've been diligently scanning books for decades but nobody has had even the slightest interest in that until their favourite hackerman showed up. Libertarian god complex is so tiresome.
- dredmorbius 2y agoSome libraries are government-funded. Many are not. That ranges from the personal book collection numbering from one to many thousands in private hands, private institutional libraries (the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco is one that comes to mind, many private universities and grammar schools have their own, as do numerous corporations, some of which are catalogued by Worldcat). Preservation of Western culture, notably the Greek and Roman canons, as well as much literature and knowledge of the Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds, occurred through religious institutions. Though in some regards those were the governments of the time. Indian, Chinese, and other further East Asian collections were preserved through multiple means. Book digitisation at US academic institutions (the University of Michigan being a major contributor to both Google Books and HathiTrust) has had its own exctremely combative relationship with commercial publishers, as has the US Library of Congress, which issues US copyright in the first place. Avoid slurs, it's an HN guideline: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>.
- kragen 2y agoMost libraries are not funded by a government. Your comment is not up to acceptable quality or civility standards and should not have been posted.