
Garbage collectors open a library with abandoned books - wowsig
http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/15/europe/garbage-collectors-open-library-with-abandoned-books/index.html
======
mechagodzilla
A surprising number of people don’t seem to understand how public libraries do
collection management. Do you see new books when you go to the library? Does
the library have infinite shelf space? They throw out books at roughly the
same rate they acquire new ones. If books don’t circulate for a long period
(I.e. no one has looked at it in five years), that book is going in the
dumpster. It had basically negative value. Most books donated to libraries are
worthless, but the donors can’t bring themselves to throw them out, so they
have the library do it for them.

“Little free libraries” have similar problems where they just fill up with
books no one wants unless their collections get actively culled.

This is a fun story, but only in the same way as articles talking about
homeless people rigging their cardboard shanties with solar powered LEDs or
something. These people would be much better served by a public library.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sometimes I think that policy abdicates the trust we have in libraries. I used
to check out a little-used book, published in 1881, which was a history of our
local town going back to its founding. With source material from the people
who slept on cloaks under a tree before the first sod was turned.

One day I looked for it, and it was gone. Probably victim to one of those book
purges. And I was upset. Not that the book was valuable, and probably went for
$1 at a jumble sale. But because it was irreplaceable.

If our own library will not preserve books about our own local history, then
who will? How can this source material ever, ever be reconstituted again? How
can anybody in charge have thought this was a good idea?

~~~
detaro
Each time someone has a "this one book" story I wonder if it wouldn't make
sense for libraries to allow people to put a purge alert on books. If it gets
removed, you get X days to come fetch it for a small fee.

That of course does not help if the book got transferred somewhere
else/stolen/lost/destroyed instead of being intentionally purged, so people
nevertheless should create and keep copies. With an 1800s book, even
publishing the copy would be legal!

~~~
mikepurvis
Given that a modern library knows everything you ever checked out, it would be
easy to do this automatically. As part of your regular checkout, the terminal
can alert you "hey, this book you checked out last year is being withdrawn— if
you're interested in purchasing it for $1, see the circulation desk."

~~~
jasonjayr
This is actually not true. Library circulation systems actively work to purge
themselves of historical transactions, at least, the few I've worked with. If
anything they keep the "last patron" for a given item for some time, in case
damage is reported, but beyond that there is no historical record, to
eliminate the possibility of searching that data via warrant or otherwise.

~~~
mikepurvis
Oh interesting. That actually makes a ton of sense; the institution of
libraries have been around for long enough to have the historical context
around that. Maybe in a few hundred years, tech companies will be so wise.

~~~
gowld
More likely, the libraries will fall victim to the modern police-state
attitude.

~~~
Cyberdog
There was a Japanese novel called Library War that later got turned into a
movie, TV series, and so on. The story took place in a fascinating if somewhat
implausible near future where certain books were banned from the public, but
libraries were exempted from the ban and could actually defend their rights
under the exemption by any means necessary. This occasionally led to armed
confrontations over the possession of these banned books.

------
gasgiant
I was completely puzzled by this headline for a few seconds. I wondered why
CNN would run a technical article about open libraries for GC. And what the
heck do "abandoned books" have to do with anything. Context is everything.

~~~
ManuelHeL
I had the exact same feeling. I initially imagined a guy finding new clues to
build an open source GC library from a pile of old Java reference books.

------
johan_larson
This is really clever. I periodically prune my library to make room for more
stuff, and always feel a bit guilty about throwing away perfectly good books.
I tried selling them, but either no one is interested or the offers are so low
they hover in the no-man's-land between insult and nuisance.

I guess the solemn judgement of the market is that used paperbacks are mostly
worthless.

~~~
manigandham
Donate them, you can drop them off at your local library or even some
bookstores.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Even to Goodwill or other places. I don't care for how Goodwill deals with
their profits but I sometimes find good books there for really cheap.

~~~
dingaling
Several charity shops locally now have signs in the window saying they no
longer accept books.

They were receiving so many unsellable pulp novels that they were having to
pay recyclers to take them away.

Which is a real shame because amongst the mass-market paperbacks I
occasionally found gems ( e.g. geological atlas of French wine regions )

------
DaveWalk
The secondhand life of books is an ongoing fascination of mine. I liked an NPR
piece about where books go after they are donated[0]. Mostly to giant
warehouses trying to flip them on Amazon for a few cents at scale...or
something more exotic, like "books-by-the-foot" sellers.

EDIT: also a little about Amazon's "penny books" [1].

[0] [https://www.wnyc.org/story/business-books-
foot-2/](https://www.wnyc.org/story/business-books-foot-2/) [1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/a-penny-for-
your...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/a-penny-for-your-
books.html)

------
irrational
If you are ever passing through Cooke City Montana, stop by the garbage dump.
They have a building with all kinds of books, artwork, etc. that they have
salvaged from the garbage.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
That brick factory building is beautiful, if you can ignore the roof of what
looks like sheet metal that was probably a more modern addition. I have no
idea how old it may be- 18th century, maybe? 17th? The arched entrances in the
front look designed to allow horse carts inside...

------
ratbr
An aside: the title is a great example of context sensitivity. On first
glance, I interpreted the title as some serious bug in garbage collection
algorithms/Systems (as in, they open some library that was an abandonware).

------
ggm
They should sort the shelves in LRU and then re-stock accordingly...

~~~
drngdds
They basically do this, but they also take into account things like the book's
condition and whether the content is relevant and valuable.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeding_(library)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeding_\(library\))

------
encoderer
Reference counting gc?

------
joaojeronimo
Clickbait, thought it was about a garbage collector open source library!

~~~
reuben364
Feels like a garden path sentence [1] targeted at developers

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

~~~
onion2k
That's only because the context has been shifted from the more general news of
CNN to the tech and developer oriented news of HN. Within the original context
of CNN _no one_ would think it's about programming languages. They don't post
stories like that. The CNN headline writer clearly wasn't trying to trick
anyone.

Kudos to wowsig if it was submitted as a joke though. That'd be quite clever.

------
thibran
Those CNN and BBC news are too often just a long wall of uninteresting text,
therefor I banned them just now from my RSS reader.

