Thread

1. zirkonit · 1790265261 · focus · HN ↗

   Our family volunteers at a nonprofit that moves a huge number of books. We take donations and run massive charity sales, clearing tens of thousands of books a month. Pricing works like a ladder: you try to sell a book for a couple of bucks, then for a dollar, then by the $5 bag, then for free, and you still end up with thousands of books nobody wants even at no cost. These used to go straight to pulp. Now they go to AI labs for scanning. Would we rather they were read, or at least owned, by someone? Yes. Is scanning better than turning them into toilet paper? Yes, even if only marginally.

   I'm sure the Anthropics of the world have shredded the last known copies of plenty of titles. But nobody talks about the last known copies that get pulped every day simply because there are so many books nobody wants and storing them is expensive.

   1. szszrk · 1790266456 · focus · HN ↗

      My wife loves bulk book hauls. Those places that we frequent, work like a literal permanent discount warehouse - books in high shelves, on pallets, everywhere. Often hundreds of issues of the same one.

      But there is so many books there that no one want's to read. Hundreds of the same book lying there for months or years.

      Same for public book-sharing "libraries" (small shelves that look like bird house, usually in parks etc). People really like them and there are many in my city, but most books there are products of a gone era and a gone mindset. No one want's that even for free.

      We were taught respect for books, but not everything is worth preserving.

      1. ghaff · 1790267656 · focus · HN ↗

         I didn't go this year but my local town library has a book sale where books go for something like $10/bag. I donate some books to them throughout the year. There are still a lot of books available on the last or second to last day of the sale. I'm sure a huge number get pulped.
      2. fakedang · 1790332482 · focus · HN ↗

         A few days back, I spent some time going through a World Book encyclopaedia set that my parents had bought for me when I was 4. It was basically an expensive investment back then into what would turn into a lifelong reading habit.

         Most of the information in it is practically worthless today unfortunately - Saddam Hussein still alive, as were Katharine Hepburn and King Hussein of Jordan, no mention of Ceres and Pluto was still a planet, and the Internet and software had barely a mention. Most articles had less information than a standard Wikipedia article.

         That being said, the way information was presented in them still outshines anything one may find on the internet today. Even the simple elements - neat diagrams and relevant images, proper sectioning and organization of the text, footnotes to other relevant articles...

         Long gone are the days when I would simply take a bowl of ice cream and a volume and just read it end to end.

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