Digital Library

Digital revolution has transformed many fields. Publishing, TV, even finance all experienced the power and benefits of widespread and deep integration of digital technology. However, there is a area most suitable for digitization and yet successfully resisted it for decades. That's our library.

Many technologies tried to transform libraries. The web was designed to freely exchange knowledge, and web sites like arXiv successfully delivered, for papers. But, the main form of preservation of our knowledge is still books. For a number of reasons, the web only succeeded in mass selling print books. The claim made by Turing Award winner Tim Berners-Lee that the web succeeds as a public library remains void. Tablets made another step forward regarding the ergonomics of reading, and yet print still lives very well.

A useful example is the presentation of technical documents. Knuth was appalled that distributors sold The Art of Computer Programming in ePub with poor typesetting. The solution was PDF, but since most publishers offer ePub books by default, digitization is of much inferior quality than print. Compare print and Kindle edition of The Quantum Theory of Fields by Steven Weinberg, and you know what I'm talking about. Somehow, backward technology stayed dominant. A revolution was killed.

The issue is more complicated with social-economic factors. Lack of public investment and regulation allowed Amazon to deny library purchase of digital books in favor of private market. Neoliberalism's roots run deep and work against public digital libraries.

A well-designed digital library benefits all, but society faces technological and ideological battles before a revolution can happen.

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