
Librarians create fake users to trick software into saving books - jedberg
https://boingboing.net/2017/01/02/automated-book-culling-softwar.html
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jedberg
I think this quote sums it up pretty well: "That's the important takeaway
here: these librarians didn't monkeywrench their software for personal gain.
They did it because they wanted to make the system better, to teach it how to
weight the circulation data to reflect the on-the-ground intelligence and
historical perspective they had on their libraries, their collections and
their patrons."

In other words, they felt like the data that the software was using to make a
decision was incomplete.

A problem we are likely to see more and more as we rely more on algorithms.

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7952
Maybe the decision shohld have been made by the librarians themselves rather
than an algorithm.

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danso
All decision-making is some form of algorithm.

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munchbunny
I'm sad that this problem could be so easily addressed if there was a sane
digital alternative to borrowing print books. All of the (legal) alternatives
I've seen have been absolute pains to deal with, and some of them are too
expensive for non-institutional libraries to carry.

If low-demand books could be kept in circulation digitally, you wouldn't have
all of these costs attached to storing books, and this problem would go away.

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dwe3000
I think they could solve this with a "librarian's choice" factor in the
algorithm. It should be reviewed regularly, but it could allow the library to
hold on to older "classics" of merit while devaluing so called "pulp fiction,"
even if readership would mean they should disappear.

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clort
similar stuff happens in my local library I'm sure. They have a detector at
the door, to count the patrons entering and leaving. I've seen the librarians
walk in and out a few times every half hour to boost the numbers.

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digler999
and why are the books being purged ? Because there's not enough space to store
all of them.

why is there not enough space ? because books take up a lot of space for the
amount of information they contain.

why do they take up so much space ? because they cannot be digitized.

why can't they be digitized ? because of archaic IP law.

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Bahamut
Even if they were digitized, not everyone has an electronic device able to
consume digital content like that.

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abstractbeliefs
So imagine instead a library where every book ever written was stored
digitally, and the library had an automated print and bind station. So to
begin with, the library would be empty shelves, perhaps taking some books off
the load of nearby similar libraries.

When you come in, you can look for the book you want. If it's not on the
shelf, you order a print, and in half an hour it's ready. Take it, read it,
return it. It goes on the shelf.

When the shelves get full, recycle the materials of the least used, or
redistribute the books to where they appear more in demand.

Now, access to e-readers is no longer a problem, and any book you want can
become available in hard print, and we solve the space problem by simply
regarding shelf space as a cache for the most in demand books. Additionally,
when books become worn, damaged, or unnecessary, we can reuse the materials.

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lsaferite
Or loan out some dirt cheap e-readers.

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digler999
exactly. they could have locked-down library-only e-readers that only show the
books you checked out.

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DanBC
Locked down library only ereaders do exist - the Playaway Lock:
[http://playaway.com/lock/](http://playaway.com/lock/)

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oriettaxx
librarians sure have read Fahrenheit 451

Luckily the movie is easily availabe
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0bVqgBSZHk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0bVqgBSZHk)

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drivingmenuts
Software may not be objective (depends on the design process) but the
librarians are definitely not objective. At least the software itself isn't
committing fraud to try and justify it's own existence.

Ultimately, we've fallen into the trap of trying to appease everyone when it's
not sensible to do so.

