Dave Bowers once said if he could not replace his library it would be his most valuable possession. That day may be coming thanks to AI. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryro...uying-and-destroying-antique-books-heres-why/
Vernor Vinge imagined this in his 2006 novel Rainbows End. https://www.facebook.com/groups/8208901822/posts/10165644705531823/ Ray Bradbury famously said: "People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it." Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose...
No matter how much they try to gas light people about this, they will never be believed or forgiven, just more hated.
Old books were frequently ripped apart. Often because they were falling to pieces, but also because they were more valuable if the pages were sold individually. I have several old pages in my collection. This is a page from an incunable, which is a book printed before 1501. I was interested in it because it talks about the sun dog or solar halo phenomenon. page CCIII from the German edition of Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, printed by Anton Koberger in Nuremberg, Germany, in December of 1493. Here is a vellum leaf for a breviary circa 1280 made in France
My Librarian daughter could talk about this topic tell 4 days after the cows came home. Very little sticks in my brain but one major factor about old books is how much acid treated paper was used in their production. I guess they call it slow burn and many of these old books burn themselves up just by sitting on the shelf. James
Scanning such a book to preserve it before it’s gone is one thing, but these companies are not doing that.
First time I heard about this, I dismissed it as an urban legend. Then somebody linked up that article. Ouch.
That's sad. It's a money thing for the company. The cost of imaging every page without doing damage would be giant. I would hope the company is trying to not destroy books of great value.
