
Rare book experts join forces to stop tome raiders - Thevet
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/17/rare-book-experts-join-forces-to-stop-tome-raiders
======
hammerandtongs
A very ugly crime.

To me this also suggests that if you own or control one of these texts that
its literally your duty to the rest of humanity to make sure it's scanned and
available for free and infinite copying SOMEWHERE.

We might lose track of the digital version but without it it's inevitable that
these volumes will decay and be lost forever.

What is the the general ethical stance about this in the rare book community?

~~~
bkst
The rare book community is the community that has facilitated these crimes.
There are more black hats than white hats--no money at all for white hats in
this business.

Private book traders make all their money by selling unique items to rich
people. The rich people doing the buying want to own something special that
other people can't have.

Bibliophiles are technophobes. They love the paper page, the book binding, the
book stacks. They don't love the content of the books, and they don't want to
share them. They have "aristocratic" ideas about who deserves to have access
to these special items. Every last one of them is a hoarder that wants to have
things that others can't have.

They hate book scanners. They hate ebooks. They hate digitization. It just
threatens their business, their status, their one-of-a-kinds.

Rare books is all about prestige and exclusivity. Digitization is a threat to
this.

I'm a book scanner--someone who loves the contents of books more than the
objects--and my kind are scorned like the gargoyles from Snow Crash.

~~~
majormajor
What's the state of the art in damageless scanning? Do you still have to rip
the pages out in order to get good, fast results?

~~~
db48x
[https://archive.org/details/InternetArchive-
Tour](https://archive.org/details/InternetArchive-Tour)

This is a video of the Scribe machine that the Internet Archive built for book
scanning. It uses two commodity digital cameras to image the pages. The
computer driving the process is running Linux and gPhoto. They're also working
on a tabletop version, which will be easier for smaller institutions to set up
and use.

------
WalterBright
Any book that is a "cultural heritage" item needs to be scanned, and it's the
duty of the library/museum to do it. The scans don't even have to be that good
- a photo with a hand-held iphone is good enough for a quick first pass.

If budget is a problem, scan a couple, sell them, and use the proceeds to scan
the rest.

~~~
userbinator
I'd extend that to "anything which is now in the public domain".

 _a photo with a hand-held iphone is good enough for a quick first pass_

Not to mention far less damaging to the original since it doesn't have to be
manipulated as much, and quicker too. Distortion is a problem but
postprocessing can give good results.

The last time I was at a library, which seems like ages ago, there were (paid)
photocopiers for those who wanted to copy a page or two. With everyone
carrying high-res cameras in their pockets, I wonder if they're still around.

~~~
WalterBright
People who scan rare books seem to be obsessed with pixel perfect scans, and
so what happens is it doesn't get done. A 90% scan is infinitely better than
no scan when the library burns down or the books are stolen.

Heck, the libraries in the article didn't even know what they had, so they
don't know what was lost.

------
brianstorms
If you want to learn more about this kind of crime, I highly recommend a
little book by Miles Harvey called THE ISLAND OF LOST MAPS: A TRUE STORY OF
CARTOGRAPHIC CRIME. Fascinating whodunit regarding thieves who would go into
rare book collections and quietly use a razor blade to carefullytear out an
ancient map inside some hundreds-of-years-old book, and often then sell it for
huge sums.

------
contingencies
Part of the impact of these thefts is difficulty of legitimate access by the
public.

Allow me to explain with an example literally from a few days ago. I turned up
in Madrid for a few days, and visited the national library wanting to see what
they held both in terms of materials regarding the area of China I am
compiling a history on, and in terms of early Spanish records of island
Southeast Asian (eg. Philippines) multihull vessels like the _vinta_.

I am forced to go through airport-like security, have my face recorded on an
Axis IP-based CCTV camera, sent to a room with three enormous desks each with
an official library bureaucrat. I explain my case, and am rapidly informed
that should I wish to view anything at all _before 1950_ then I must apply for
a research card. Sure! What does that require? Photo ID - passport, check.
Proof of address - what? Bank statement accepted, download one, OK, check.
Proof you are from an inexplicit list of recognized national, educational or
cultural institutions. I'm an admin for Wikipedia, writing articles
specifically on traditional multihull vessels that have hundreds of thousands
of pageviews and have been front page featured, but that didn't seem to count.
They wouldn't let me in. The 'librarian' (who I feel deserves no such title)
actually went so far as to attempt to 'explain' to me - "You see, it's like a
_club_. The universities, the libraries, ...".

That very same night, I had dinner after visiting a diplomat in their home.
Some friends of theirs were also present, one of whom a reigning library
science academic of repute within that field in Madrid and Spain. I explained
the horrible experience I had attempting to dedicate some of my minimal time
in the city to using their national library. In return, it was explained that
the difficulty of using the place is a direct response to the theft of a
number of extremely rare texts some years ago, over which people lost their
jobs. The problem is frequent, and even international academics all face it. I
was of course also offered a letter of reference, but did not have enough time
left in the city to visit a second time... so the resources remain
unconsulted. (The irony of the fact that we dined on Mahgreb cuisine was not
lost on me: the former Muslim rulers of Cordoba/Andalusia were great sponsors
of libraries, translation and learning in general.)

Moral of the story, then, is perhaps that the real loser is the public: paying
for increased security, losing access to the stolen items, but critically -
being denied access at all for legitimate inquiry, thereby making a mockery of
the purpose of the institutions in the first place.

The best possible thing would be to digitize the originals... this removes the
need to visit by making them more accessible, allows backups to secure against
disaster, theft or loss by other means, and increases the value of the
originals (because people know they exist, cite and use them). British Library
want some godawful amount like 400GBP to photograph old images they hold. It's
daylight bloody robbery, especially coming from these colonial countries that
stole their damn holdings. The EU should force libraries to digitize this
stuff.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I can't see a reason a Freedom of Information Act request wouldn't be proper
against the contents of BL held photographs assuming the photos are out of
copyright.

[http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/foi/overview/](http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/foi/overview/)

However, I'm sure the BL have lawyers standing by ready to stop you under one
of the mentioned - but not disclosed - "exemptions" in the above link.

~~~
userbinator
The "freedom" they refer to there is probably "free as in libre", not "free as
in gratis" \- they are allowed to provide you with that information, and if
it's public-domain you can do whatever you want with it afterwards, but they
are allowed to charge you for the labour of doing it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
AIUI under FoI they can charge an admin fee, IIRC that's of the order of £10.
That would be considerably cheaper than £400 mentioned.

<a few seconds of research ensues ...>

[https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-
gui...](https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for-
practitioners/fees) mentions £25 per hour. Assuming that the images are
already on BL computers somewhere then them providing a link or sending them
by email would likely be a couple of minutes; with admin certainly within the
hour.

FoI is about free-libre but they can't put financial blocks in the way as
that's undemocratic, it would make the FoI only accessible to the rich.

~~~
userbinator
_Assuming that the images are already on BL computers somewhere then them
providing a link or sending them by email would likely be a couple of minutes;
with admin certainly within the hour._

I read his comment as meaning they haven't digitised them (yet), and BL wants
£400 to do it. Not that I agree with charging that much as I think they
should've done that already, but if he's asking for a bunch of large, old, and
fragile images, it could be delicate and time-consuming work.

