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And you DON’T destroy them immediately after? 👀 Marvellous, fellas

Don't forget to destroy them when you're done. That's very important.

Email info@archive.org. It'll go to the books group.

Is it possible to buy one of these machines?

Sadly, there archive seems to have lost 100s of public domain books from the late 1800s and early 1900s... And in many old books with fold out tipped in illustrations, your hand process failed to digitize pages. Luckily, I downloaded stuff years ago for my own historical reference

Haven't been able to my scanner software active. May I have one of these, please. I'll gladly contribute anything I find that isn't in the archive.

So I've heard. I've also heard that by 'rare' is meant 'out of print'. If a book was actually an antique it would be more valuable left untouched, and nobody in their right mind would destroy it. Most of these 'reports' are fueled by irrational fears of technology, and by social media trendiness.

Wow it's only legal if they destroy the source?

Oh, maybe. That would suck if true.

Honestly dream job

Aye, there's always something shady when gigantic capitals are involved, in general, destructive methods for something like literature and written records should be a last resort, not a cost-saving measure

Yeah. The Google book scan, which reported into me in 2012/2013, had custom machines that worked on a large share of fragile *paper* books. Google open sourced the design of an earlier version of this scanner.

Digitizing books the RIGHT way. love it.

I'm trying to figure out how she turns the pages without wearing a finger condom or licking her fingers.

I would not want that task. 😳

Love you guys.

I've been banging a drum for a while now that our department should have a robust section just for that, not contractors, and hire people like me with an MLIS or some similar education. It won't happen, but I can dream.

hey i used to work in a job with one of these. nice to see em still around

Wow, I had no idea there are angled scanners like that, but that's brilliant. Also: Thank you so much for what you do! (And how you do it.)

I don't understand why you wouldn't just eviscerate the book right after, don't you know it's the future? /S

OH MY GOD! You people are SAINTS!

I wonder how expensive that scanner is

Hmmm. There was no mention of destroying the book when finished.

But wait, why isn't the book being chopped up and force fed through a machine, then shredded? You know, like the experts do? 😂

i didn't know angled scanners were a thing, that you can just rest the book on it

they only scan ones that are public domain. the copyright issues they've run into are largely over public users uploading stuff to the archive that they shouldn't be.

Thanks for doing it the right way. It’s a crime against humanity that these trillion dollar companies are destroying rare books in the name of enhancing shareholder value

That's the best way, but sheesh, even doing it with a robot would be better than the way AI feeders are chopping books.

this must be such a tedious process, but also, this is clearly a highly optimized workflow and I respect that y'all are doing the greatest of services for humankind and I have immense respect for your work

Oh, so you can digitise a book without killing it. Who would have thought it? Obviously not the geniuses at Amazon.

youtube.com/shorts/GSIjD... Audio book 😁

Dream job

i want this job. TT_TT

It's cool how they don't destroy the book and feed it to the plagiarism machine

But you preserve the original, right?

Then why is Ai tearing apart rare book?

Oops…she missed a page…

And no one had to chop off a spine

Admittedly, I'd be fine with the page turning being automated; as long as the source book is treated with care and preserved (both during and afterwards), I'm onboard.

I love you

Is this a Manfred Mayer design? in another life I imaged historical manuscripts, and I do miss it sometimes...

I worked in a 'copy center' for a while a long time ago, and as long as you don't care about the quality, you can do it a lot quicker by taking the books apart (just cutting off the bindings) and sending them through high-speed copiers, which is what 'AI scanning for training' is all about!

Wait so there's a better way than to tear books apart and then burn them!?

The series is great!

So you don't have to destroy books to scan them. Someone should tell Amazon.

The outrageous parts are everything else

I think it's outrageous that AI gets to train on copy righted material. I think it outrageous that their data centers raise our electric bills, stress our grids, poison our air, and suck up our water. Them having to pay a slave wage hypothetically is among the least outrageous shit.

$7.50 an hour is pretty outrageous. That book is what is truly building those data centers they spend billions on.

Thank you.

I celebrate your work, but it scares me that you're now in a race against time vs AI butchery

How many scans of the backs of someone’s hand do you have? Also thanks for the great work!

hire me I'll do this all day 😭

If by any change Eliza leaves the work can I took her place?

How about instead of bragging about this, you give us some information about why the Wayback Machine (aka the main reason people use your site) is down.

This is how they use books to train AI?

Make a donation, they are doing important works.