this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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...why? Why?
More that they are destroying the books in the process of digitizing them, they basically cut the pages out of the book and feed them into a scanner with a document feeder attached.
It's worth pointing out that this is standard practice when digitising books in most places, if they're not irreplaceable. Mass-produced books would fall under that category.
Turning the page and photographing what's there is really only done for some books, which you can't afford to destroy.
From what I've read previously, they're destroying all the books, regardless if they're historic and one-of-a-kind or a mass produced paperback.
Do you think they're discriminating? Really?
At least in this case, yes. They'd just not get them, since they'd want something they can already easily process, and the source for the quote is a bookseller, who isn't likely to sell something like that to begin with.
An old book that might disintegrate and damage the scanner and hold things up would be undesirable, compared to either a new one, or a reprint of an old one.
That's not how most of that works.
Things would be sold in bulk. Mistakes happen. Literally the only part of what you said that makes any sense is that fucked up pages could clog the pipe.