<
https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/15/digital-books-wear-out-faster-than-physical-books/>
"Ever try to read a physical book passed down in your family from 100 years
ago? Probably worked well. Ever try reading an ebook you paid for 10 years
ago? Probably a different experience. From the leasing business model of mega
publishers to physical device evolution to format obsolescence, digital books
are fragile and threatened.
For those of us tending libraries of digitized and born-digital books, we know
that they need constant maintenance—reprocessing, reformatting, re-invigorating
or they will not be readable or read. Fortunately this is what libraries do (if
they are not sued to stop it). Publishers try to introduce new ideas into the
public sphere. Libraries acquire these and keep them alive for generations to
come.
And, to serve users with print disabilities, we have to keep up with the
ever-improving tools they use.
Mega-publishers are saying electronic books do not wear out, but this is not
true at all. The Internet Archive processes and reprocesses the books it has
digitized as new optical character recognition technologies come around, as new
text understanding technologies open new analysis, as formats change from djvu
to daisy to epub1 to epub2 to epub3 to pdf-a and on and on. This takes
thousands of computer-months and programmer-years to do this work. This is what
libraries have signed up for—our long-term custodial roles.
Also, the digital media they reside on changes, too—from Digital Linear Tape to
PATA hard drives to SATA hard drives to SSDs. If we do not actively tend our
digital books they become unreadable very quickly.
Then there is cataloging and metadata. If we do not keep up with the
ever-changing expectations of digital learners, then our books will not be
found. This is ongoing and expensive.
Our paper books have lasted hundreds of years on our shelves and are still
readable. Without active maintenance, we will be lucky if our digital books
last a decade."
Via Kenny Chaffin.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
