Memory Hole Activate!

[Fife]

I'm sorry, Mr. Graduate Student, the "book" you are asking about never existed.


On UCSC’s outrageous mass destruction of books

I’ve since found that the phenomenon of shrinking and destroying university research libraries is international. But as we like to say here at UCSC, we are at the vanguard.
Our head librarian prefers the word “de-duplicate” to “destroy”, “remove” or “shred”.

The rationale behind de-duplification? Space. Empty study space with desks for the flood of 600 additional students UC Santa Cruz was pressured to admit this Fall.

How did the library staff decide what books to de-duplicate? Data, analytics, the ubiquitous algorithm, devoid of a human element. If a book had not been touched, according to library data, in the last five years, then it went on their chopping list.

This rationality ignores the library’s clients: humans.

My friend Gildas, a biblical scholar, went to the Science library last week to consult an important book on ancient technologies. He had consulted the book several times before. Oops! De-duplicated.

[TheReal_ND]

What happened to microfiche? Plenty of basket weaving majors that could intern as an archivist if you ask me.

[Penner]

What happened to microfiche? Plenty of basket weaving majors that could intern as an archivist if you ask me.

You need a special college degree to become an archivist, even for your local public library.

[Okeefenokee]

[Penner]

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

This is fantastic.

Once all information is stored digitally and networked, it will be so much easier to 'correct' mistakes in the record, unfettered from the shibboleth of print.

[TheReal_ND]

I just keep reading this OP thinking about my sphincter and telling it to do the opposite some mornings before I get to the stall.

That said, microphish is the solution. I don't understand what's so hard about getting some useless degree rich kids to intern as a miciiphosher while they smoke weed and play with playdo or something.

[BjornP]

Their argument for why they need to get rid of books on occasion is perfectly rational from an economic perspective. Only factoring in prolonged non-use from students ,decreases the opportunity for students to start more original projects and that's a problem. But the problem with asking the students now is the same as the algorithm, they don't know what litterature future students might need.

[BjornP]

This is fantastic.

Once all information is stored digitally and networked, it will be so much easier to 'correct' mistakes in the record, unfettered from the shibboleth of print.

What do you mean by "'correct' mistakes in the record"?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Oh, you know.

Now that we know better, we can simply search and replace information with whatever is new and improved. We would hate for people to have errors of thought because of outdated literature.

Hell, once we are able to ram people's smartphones directly into their brains, we won't even have to wait for them to search for something to update their thinking.