Umberto Eco looks for a book in his private library

I’m all for comprehensive copyright reform that puts the author first. I’m fine with copyright that lasts the life of the author, and maybe a short period after they die. After a short period, if the author signs over their copyright to a publisher, it should eventually revert back to the author automatically, so they can look into getting other publishers to reprint. And authors should have options on the type of copyright they have, from the traditional to a creative commons type structure with options on how to make it available.

But often the reason a book falls out of print is due to low sales. There are thousands upon thousands of books published each year just in the US alone, and as a result tons of books get lost in the shuffle. And not all publishers have the deep pockets to promote all their authors with the same level of support.

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I would agree with all this except that with print on demand and e-books it should still be possible to be able to purchase even the most obscure sorts of books without much difficulty or really any overhead expenses. Making such options available seems to me a reasonable requirement for maintaining copyright. I’m basically saying that if a book is no longer in print, it should be legal to check the book out of a library and take it to OfficeMax and make a copy of the whole thing to keep and then return the book. If they don’t give you any other means to purchase the book then what else can you do? This is particularly true when publishers, rather than authors own the copyright.

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So the people who digitize books in the first place should not be paid for their work? Archivists are on the front lines of getting this done, and they deserve fair compensation for this work. It’s not as easy as point a camera and shoot or toss it in some digitizer. It takes time and effort, especially if it’s an older rare book that needs to be handled with extreme care.

I think you’re really underestimating how much published material is out there that has not been digitized. Hell, there are tons and tons of zines for example - a newer type of publication that overlaps the digital age - that just aren’t scanned and digitized, often to my frustration. I don’t believe the entire run of The Big Take Over (which started out as a zine and became a glossy mag) is digitized. I ended up buying the whole run directly from Jack Rabid.

Yeah. Don’t do that. Get someone with expertise to scan in a book. It’s not the same thing as running off a few documents. Copies made on copiers are not of the same quality as books that are digitized professionally. I’ve scanned in articles from books for students on a big office printer/scanne, for example, and they are not exactly what I’d call library quality.

Also, from the Library of Congress:

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No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying, that they should get paid. I’m saying that the authors should get paid when I want to buy their book. I’m saying that when I want to buy a copy of The Big Take Over issue 4, I should be able to go to ZineReissuesOnDemand.com and buy a copy for $26 dollars (some of which goes to the digitizing service and some of which goes to the author) rather than having to borrow it from my friend and illegally (and perhaps unethically) making a copy of it, in which case the author doesn’t get paid. I’m saying that publishers should be required to make such options available if they want to keep the copyright on works.

The point of this exercise is not to provide a digital copy to the world but to be able to have a personal archive copy sufficient for a single person’s research needs. While it would be nice to have a professional digitalization of Formal Philosophy by Richard Montague for example, having a copy I can merely read is just fine for me.

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Given that the master of the library was a blind monk named Jorge of Burgos…

(ETA: for those who don’t know, Borges was a blind librarian)

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It costs time and money to digitize these works. It’s not easy or cheap or free. We’re not really in a position to make that cheap and easy right now. It could be in the future, but it’s not a simple process to digitize works.

If you’re talking about print on demand, it’s not just about personal use, it’s about creating a system where books that are currently out of print can be easily printed off for the end user - which takes time and money. Your example of the zine website is a good one, but it doesn’t exist, because even with zines, you’re dealing with a labyrinth of laws, access to both the materials and to equipment to scan stuff in. If you don’t have a copy of the book, someone needs to have it and someone needs access to more than just an office scanner/printer.

If you do, you can always scan it in at home on a scanner, if you’re not worried about quality.

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I forgot that part. All I remember of the book is the bit with Bucephalus at the beginning…

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Whoa, looks large enough to warrant the use of a bicycle to get from one side to another! But make no mistake, the professor not only had a working library (you can see lots of unbound papers arranged orizontally), but also a huge “pleasure” section: rare and ancient books. He built up quite a collection, being an avowed bibliophile, and as he became famous he could indulge quite a bit (the monetary value was around 4 millions euro IIRC). Work and pleasure combined, it doesn’t get any better.

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Working in a small print shop I learned you definitely can get a library quality digitization, or better scan with a standard multi-function copier, but you make a massive trade off in time and file sizes. We’ve worked with some authors to reissue their books after the original files are long gone and you can get beautiful output with a flatbed scanner, time, and an experienced worker. For some of our more recent projects we were averaging about 3 minutes per page black and white or 5+ for color. The most recent book came in at almost 10 gigs for a 200 page book. The good equipment is optional.

No amount of copyright reworking is going to come anywhere close to achieving that goal with current tech and none will come close with any near term reasonably foreseeable tech. There are a huge number of books that are some combination of low distribution, niche interest, and fragile that will never be digitized. Even books that people want and the copyright holder wants to see back out struggle with that. I worked with a guy who wrote a book on a small regional rail line a back in the 70s. At the time no one cared and he sold under 100 copies. In the intervening years some combination of corporate mergers and the march of time made the topic more interesting to a group of people. Despite the author wanting to reissue the book, an audience wanting the book reissued, and a company willing to handle the printing and distribution, it still was cost prohibitive because the original plates were lost and the existing books were too fragile to scan in any bulk process. Even when the law is on your side, it still may not be possible.

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Many thanks for the links!
And yes, I can imagine the problems with older and fragile items, you can’t exactly squash a crumbling old book on a scanner’s glass, the very thought makes me go cold.
I already see many of my parent’s books from the 50’s getting badly yellowed and crumbly, especially at the margins, with the binding glue disintegrating. I wouldn’t scan such items on a consumer-grade machine, unless I wanted to destroy them in the process…

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Depending on the kind of book, too, as I understand it, many books from that period that are mass market paper backs were printed on very cheap paper that doesn’t last as long as modern papers… Some might be printed on higher quality paper of the day, of course.

But yeah, it’s not a simple process digitizing books at all. My hats off to the archivists (etc) who do this work, because I think it’s important work that needs doing. It’s not even half way there, though, I’m guessing.

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Read books are far less valuable than unread ones

Anyone care to explain this? I guess it depends on your definition of value.

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I’d think it means:

  • Unread book. The contents is in the book. You’d need to have the physical book in order to read it. It’s valuable.
  • You read a book. Now you know the contents. The physical book just lost it’s value.

Not convinced by this (/my own) logic, though :wink:

I’m seriously thinking of digitizing the indices from all my books. (Of course, to be as useful as I’m envisoning/., the OCR has to be damn near perfect. For every keyword, Finereader gets but one chance.) Then dump them all into Devonthiink, and … productivity awaits!

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