Library of Congress Digitization Strategy: 2023-2027 | Hacker News Reader

Library of Congress Digitization Strategy: 2023-2027

blogs.loc.gov

31 pointsmikae17 comments

When the San Francisco Public Library unveiled its new Civic Center masterpiece building, the freshly minted Director made a statement to the effect of ".. a modern library is no place for old paper"

Librarians for decades in this area had been photographing newspapers and magazines (prone to rot on acidic paper stocks) but, books? rare, craft, good paper books? let's say that these statements were controversial

Foolishness takes many forms and I for one, point to the ridiculous fad of destroying quality print books at an Institution designed for their use. Digitize by all means ! do not destroy the originals.

Reminds me of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End. There’s a subplot in which the Geisel Library wants to digitize thousands of books in a very fast amount of time, but the digitization machine to do so needs to destroy the books by tearing apart the binding.

Where does it say originals will be destroyed? You can digitize them without destroying them.

Digitized books are more valuable, IMHO: They are accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, rather than anyone in the Library of Congress' building.

Over centuries the real books will still be much more valuable. Paper, even if it's dusty and half rotten will be there and somewhat readable even if we forget about it. Some old file format, on ancient hardware, probably not... unless we actively keep it alive.

The words in them are the thing of real value.

The value of the paper is to a rich person to pay a lot of money publicly at auction (preferably with gasps and applause from the other patrons in the room) and then lock the paper into a himiditiy controlled glass case in their hallway never to be seen by mere mortals.

Unless there is a secret map on the back of the document leading to the nations hidden treasure ...

Read Double Fold. It will make you hate librarians.

The real question is does this mean we will get to watch The Day the Clown Cried without travelling to Washington, DC?

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