Preserving Books for the Future
A lot of pundits are predicting that the rise of the e-book means the extinction of the paper book. I'm not sure I really buy that. I think paper books will still be around . . . sure, the majority of books will be in digital form, but I think paper books will continue to exist as a specialized collector's commodity. So while I don't necessarily agree with the premise, I gotta admit that The Technium lays it out in one hell of an evocative paragraph:
We are in a special moment that will not last beyond the end of this century: Paper books are plentiful. They are cheap and everywhere, from airports to drug stores to libraries to bookstores to the shelves of millions of homes. There has never been a better time to be a lover of paper books. But very rapidly the production of paper books will essentially cease, and the collections in homes will dwindle, and even local libraries will not be supported to house books — particularly popular titles. Rare books will collect in a few rare book libraries, and for the most part common paper books archives will become uncommon. It seems hard to believe now, but within a few generations, seeing a actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion.
So, okay, sure, I may not think paper books are going to disappear completely, but they are disappearing, all right. So what should we be doing with specimens of this endangered species?
Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive [...] noticed that Google and Amazon and other countries scanning books would cut non-rare books open to scan them, or toss them out after scanning. He felt this destruction was dangerous for the culture. [...]
Brewster decided that he should keep a copy of every book they scan so that somewhere in the world there was at least one physical copy to represent the millions of digital copies. That safeguarded random book would become the type specimen of that work. If anyone ever wondered if the digital book's text had become corrupted or altered, they could refer back to the physical type that was archived somewhere safe. [....]
The link is totally worth checking out, just for the details of how they're making this physical archive. The scale of it all is kinda jaw-dropping.
A prudent society keeps at least one specimen of all it makes, forever. It still amazes me that after 20 years the only publicly available back up of the internet is the privately funded Internet Archive. The only broad archive of television and radio broadcasts is the same organization. They are now backing up the backups of books. Someday we'l realize the precocious wisdom of it all and Brewster Kahle will be seen as a hero.
– The Technium: When Hard Books Disappear
"Someday?" Hell, I think he's a hero now.
