> We reprint old books after checking out copyrights

Who is we?

> then store the pages in a sealed plastic bag which goes in the archives; they're stored there indefinitely

Is that the best thing for archival storage? Like could things like chemical breakdown increase the humidity in the sealed bag or concentrate corrosive chemical vapors? I was under the impression the best environment was an actively climate-controlled environment.

The issue is mold. Sealed plastic bags for old books is a recipe for mold. At least they're individually stored, so they would develop mold at independent rates. (And maybe the seal allows airflow.)

Most books have some mold by the time they're ~100 years old, it's just not enough to cause a serious problem. Sealed enclosures (wrappings, bags, tubs) are a nightmare situation. Even packing books too tighly on shelves accelerates mold growth to problematic levels.

If I did that I'd seal them with silica gel to keep the humidity down.

I would think this totally dries the pages out and then they just turn to dust, from experience.

A well-organized system derived from binder clips works for small/medium scale collections of debound books. It's a quick and easy, and relatively cheap, way to "rebind" them in parts. The clips even provide good surfaces for labels.

Archivists recommend standard ambient conditions or a little drier for long term storage. As you've said, too dry and the pages fall apart; permanent damage.

I suppose the fancy silica gels that maintain specific humidities would work in bags.

>> If I did that I'd seal them with silica gel to keep the humidity down.

> I would think this totally dries the pages out and then they just turn to dust, from experience.

They used to sell Boveda two-way humidity control packs that would keep a bag at a constant low-ish 32% humidity, but last I looked those were discontinued (it looks like they've pivoted pretty heavily to marijuana storage and higher-humidity products).

My understanding is that the fibers in paper can become brittle if they are too dry. However, this doesn't cause the paper to break down, it just makes it vulnerable to damage if flexed. So storing paper dry is fine if it is then humidified before being stressed.

It's possible. My only experience is with vintage newspapers that were allowed to dry out, and then when trying to open them just shatter like a carbonized volcano scroll.

It's truly humbling how much knowledge professionals from different fields have, and how easy it is to fall into a Dunning–Kruger effect trap where a bit of knowledge — extremely extrapolated — would've led me down the path of hubris and guessing so many wrong answers. Thanks all.

One of the best things about this site is how many people there are on here who are way smarter than me, with much deeper domain knowledge.

Or we just reflexively look stuff up.

I think that we all have varying degrees of The Knack [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/g8vHhgh6oM0?t=50

Though newspapers are printed on some of the lowest quality paper possible, so they're probably suffering from other issues than just dryness.

Like the short lifespan of acid paper. Drying might actually slow down that degradation.

Dealing with mold in an archival environment is a nightmare, and yeah, the only thing sealing the books in plastic does is make it easier to either throw them away, or to freeze them to try to kill and then manually clean out the mold. https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/3...

How about irradiating them? Would kill the mold without the humidity problems.

> And no, no AI company has ever come to us and asked to run training on all of our scanned copies

The value of most very old books for AI training is very low. You don’t really want your AI training data to start biasing toward outdated writing styles. Most of the valuable knowledge has been covered again in modern texts in more depth and detail.

There is interesting value in old texts and it’s important to have them archived. It’s less valuable for stirring into the giant pot of AI training data, though.

If you only care about facts, maybe. Even then I'm sure there are countless facts not described outside of old books.

I have a hard time believing that text valuable to humans would not be valuable to AI.

Agreed, in addition LLMs are trained on a lot of useless data, such as the whole Reddit dataset which has to be at least 90% Reddit garbage, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem. I don’t see why ai labs wouldn’t want to also train on older data

It could be translated to contemporary prose before training.

Some source or citation or context is needed here, is this the work of a 2 person no profit or a trillion valued pre IPO company?

> And no, no AI company has ever come to us and asked to run training on all of our scanned copies

Yet

Why cut off the spines? Isn't that how you end up getting unattributed 'dead sea scrolls'?

It's easier to get good quality scans from individual pages than it is from pages in a complete book. Imagine laying a book flat, then the page is distorted in the area around the spine. You can work around this (either by trying to correct for the distortion in software or with clever scanners that position the book more advantageously) but it adds complexity compared to chopping off the spine and just dealing with flat sheets of paper.

Speed and cost. You can run the book through a typical sheet-fed scanner instead of using a contraption like this: https://linearbookscanner.org/

As for consumer-grade solutions, look for the Fujitsu SV600.

Easier to send them through a duplex scanner (or put them in a flatbed one if they are fragile). Cheaper than buying the automated ones with the page turning robot arm.

I have done it at home for my books since the mid-00s.

Do you purchase every book two times, or do you have a home devoid of physical books that you enjoy? Genuinely curious

Not OP, but: If it's something I want to work from, I get a printer to slice the spine off and rebind it with a ring binding. That way it lays flat on the desk.

You've trashed the book (and its lifespan) but some books are for using, not keeping.

Not OP, but I do similar. I only de-spine a book if it is in poor condition (and I have a nice copy). Some of the material I scan is stapled instead of glued and I can remove the staples, scan and replace with new (not rusted!) staples to return the book to its original form.

I have books but would have 5x as many if I could not capture them digitally. (When I go to move or go through a purge, some of the books I scanned do go to a used book store.)

So I scan in part to keep my physical book-footprint smaller, but also my scans all get cleaned up and uploaded to archive.org. Mainly I scan young-adult science books from the 50's and 60's (since they were so influential and have all but disappeared except on eBay and the like).

Thank you for your service, genuinely.

Sometimes? But for scanning I can use a cheap worn copy as long as the pages are clean.

Most books I would rather have a digital copy. I had four or five book cases full of stuff and it makes moving difficult.

I originally started scanning 20 years ago when it was more difficult to find PDFs of basically whatever you want. Now it is only random old books I find at the used shop or online for cheap and somehow cannot get from archive.org or elsewhere.

Most likely they don't know you exist. If you contacted them first, maybe something could be arranged...

Geez - their LLMs couldn't figure it out?

Can you?

I don't know which company the OP belongs to in particular, but searching online reveals plenty of similar cos.

or just send the books/scans to a country that doesn't recognize US copyright