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90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened. These books were all produced by destroying and processing trees, sometimes with toxic chemicals, and t

90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened. These books were all produced by destroying and processing trees, sometimes with toxic chemicals, and their information density is orders of magnitude lower than that of a hard disk or SSD. Same with photo processing, where 90% of photos taken are discarded, and the toxicity of the chemicals is even higher. So the question isn't simply whether storage is wasted; it's how much waste there is relative to the environmental impact. Granted, books and photographs don't need to be continuously fed energy to make the information available. However, the cost of storage is now so cheap that even with 90% waste, it's economically viable to keep it online. So the problem, if you can call it one, is that energy is too cheap, and externalities are not accounted for in the cost.

foobahify 2y ago
Yes. Rather than compare to paper, compare to yesterday's HDDs. Do we need more HDDs today than then?
plasticeagle 2y ago
> 90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened I'm reasonably certain that this statistic is completely made up. The best number I can find for the proportion of library books that are never borrowed was from a university library, and was 25%.
mvc 2y ago
> 90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened. Citation required. But don't bother because it's a meaningless statistic, or at least one designed to make it look like there's a lot more wastage in libraries than there actually is. The statistic could be true, and yet still be the case that the vast majority of library books are well utilized.
- otterley 2y ago
  I should have been less specific than “library” as such. Libraries aren’t only institutional. Consider every book, magazine, and newspaper that sits today in everyone’s home, office, and in every institution in the world. The vast majority of them have been read once and then left on a shelf or in a box somewhere, taking up more or less valuable space.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    > 90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened > The vast majority of them have been read once and then left on a shelf So opened at least once, with once being higher than never.
    - otterley 2y ago
      Never opened again after the first time—which I think most readers implicitly understood. Regardless, that’s my bad.
mrweasel 2y ago
Now we're also getting into the topic of "what is waste". Because the majority of the books that are opened are rehashes of the same murder mystery over and over and over. I'd guess that 75% of all new books sold here are variations on "Someone is murdered in a brutal fashion. A old drunken cop from somewhere in Scandinavia is assigned the case. He's helped by a young woman, who may be his daughter or who he'll a father daughter relationship to. They solve the case, maybe, the end. You just tweak the details a little, but it's the same bloody story over and over. That seems like such a waste of paper in my mind.
- S_Bear 2y ago
  As a librarian, that's only around 35% of new books. The rest are about a hard-working professional woman in the big city that inherits her dead aunt's coffee shop in Cape Cod and has a prickly love-hate relationship with the local handyman. There may be a magic cat involved. And books about vampires having love triangles with a werewolf/zombie/black lagoon monster and a Mary Sue insert.

foobahify 2y ago

Yes. Rather than compare to paper, compare to yesterday's HDDs. Do we need more HDDs today than then?

plasticeagle 2y ago

> 90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened I'm reasonably certain that this statistic is completely made up. The best number I can find for the proportion of library books that are never borrowed was from a university library, and was 25%.

mvc 2y ago

> 90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened. Citation required. But don't bother because it's a meaningless statistic, or at least one designed to make it look like there's a lot more wastage in libraries than there actually is. The statistic could be true, and yet still be the case that the vast majority of library books are well utilized.

otterley 2y ago
I should have been less specific than “library” as such. Libraries aren’t only institutional. Consider every book, magazine, and newspaper that sits today in everyone’s home, office, and in every institution in the world. The vast majority of them have been read once and then left on a shelf or in a box somewhere, taking up more or less valuable space.
- vel0city 2y ago
  > 90% of libraries consist of books that are never opened > The vast majority of them have been read once and then left on a shelf So opened at least once, with once being higher than never.
  - otterley 2y ago
    Never opened again after the first time—which I think most readers implicitly understood. Regardless, that’s my bad.

mrweasel 2y ago

Now we're also getting into the topic of "what is waste". Because the majority of the books that are opened are rehashes of the same murder mystery over and over and over. I'd guess that 75% of all new books sold here are variations on "Someone is murdered in a brutal fashion. A old drunken cop from somewhere in Scandinavia is assigned the case. He's helped by a young woman, who may be his daughter or who he'll a father daughter relationship to. They solve the case, maybe, the end. You just tweak the details a little, but it's the same bloody story over and over. That seems like such a waste of paper in my mind.

S_Bear 2y ago
As a librarian, that's only around 35% of new books. The rest are about a hard-working professional woman in the big city that inherits her dead aunt's coffee shop in Cape Cod and has a prickly love-hate relationship with the local handyman. There may be a magic cat involved. And books about vampires having love triangles with a werewolf/zombie/black lagoon monster and a Mary Sue insert.