Post #4404034

From an archival point of view, nothing that they’re destroying doesn’t exist in numerous libraries. Yes, destroying rare books isn’t good but archives the world over will hold copies of these tomes. If this was an actual concern archivists the world over would be shouting about it. In my experience they are rabid protectors of our material heritage. In reality they see digitisation as a significant part of the preservation of that heritage. As an example: paper production went through a crisis 1800 - 1850; it used to be made from discarded cotton cloth (and was of high quality); but by 1800 not enough old cloth could be sourced to satisfy demand; so they started to make paper from pulped wood; which was very bad as it contained lignin which is acidic; but it took years to figure this out; in western archives are lots of books and newspapers turning into confetti from that period; we can save some material from that period by washing out the acidity and lining the pages with very thin, very strong Japanese tissue; it just isn’t economically viable to save all extant copies of some mass produced book/newspaper; better to preserve some select holdings in special repository libraries and digitise it for posterity. There are way more important issues to get riled around the arseholes developing AI and the data centres they demand. This is just rage baiting.