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Comment by anonymouz | Hacker News Reader

It is decorative, visitors can easily get a glance on what I am reading and might pick out something that interests them, and last but not least: archival purposes. I feel confident that, say, 50 years from now, most of my physical books will still be around somewhere (maybe in a room, maybe in a moving box), and waiting to be picked up to be read.

With my ebooks I am not so sure that I'll be disciplined about keeping backups on contemporary storage material, have a reader still able to read the format or a tool to convert them easily.

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>50 years from now, most of my physical books will still be around

I must admit I don't share your confidence in modern book making methods. I've had books fall apart after a couple of months, so I don't see 50 years happening.

Its the same with CD & DVD...we are promised many years of safe storage but in practice they fail soon.

I have good chunk of books that are 25+ years and still look close to new, so 50 years sounds easy to achieve for all but the most well worn books.

For my digital media I'm paranoid - I have a mirrored NAS, rsynced to a third drive, copies on my laptop, and two offsite backups of most of my media, and I'm still concerned about how easy it is to lose it.

Especially as most of my early writing (of little value to anyone but me, but of great sentimental value) only survives on printouts - even faded acidic printer paper from the early 80's to early 90's have long outlasted the storage media holding the files it was saved on. Not because disks can't live long, but because the density and relative fragility makes it so much easier to lose or damage the data.

>I have good chunk of books that are 25+ years

Exactly. They were made 25 years ago. I'm talking about books being printed right now. Quality is not what it once was.

A lot of the recently printed books I have are printed on substantially higher quality paper than a lot of the older books I have - I really haven't seen that loss in quality.

It varies greatly by book.

A sewn cloth binding, archival-grade acid-free paper, and good inks will last centuries.

Pulp paperbacks may fall apart after a single reading, though I've got a few I've had for 20+ years and multiple readings, though a few of those have a fair bit of packaging tape on them.

Several of my college textbooks fell apart distressingly fast, and I've got a number of softcover books whose pages are getting unglued (varying vintages). Different cover materials can also have different longevities: a few composite / plastic covered books have had the covers crack off or break.

It depends where. In Japan modern books are still made to be very durable and have high quality, UV protected paper if you purchase a proper edition.

I think it hinges on the paper and print quality mostly. The binding can be repaired if one treats a book a bit rough (my library offers a workshop for that...). While I have heard that the usual paper quality used for printing has degraded, I haven't seen any indications of problems in my own books so far. I also regularly consult books in libraries whose printing dates range all over the 20th century. Of course, they may not be pretty any more, and the paper often becomes yellowish, but treated somewhat decently they seem to age well and still be completely usable.

CD's and DVD's are another matter unfortuntaly... I am now basically operating under the assumption that any CD or DVD will be unreadable after a few years.

>I also regularly consult books in libraries

If I'm not mistaken then libraries buy a higher grade of books designed to endure much more. I've seen it on Amazon. i.e. a book comes in ebook, paperback, hardback & then another category - the name of it currently eludes me though.

I agree on the re-binding though.

"Library Binding" may be the term you are looking for - though this is not necessarily available from the publisher and libraries get it done after purchasing a regular copy. Some publishers offer Library Binding editions of some of their books.

How about paying to license the material - an album or film say that includes lifelong access to digital versions. Then when your CDS or DVDS go off. Or your DVDs are superceded by a better format, you could just download a replacement. Loads of my CDs have holes in them from decay. And I'm feeling really ripped off with my DVD collection - some of the quality is atrocious. There's no way I'll pay again for the same film in a different format. Most of my VHS and DVDs have made there way to charity shops. I only hold onto the CDS because of the stupid law in the UK that outlaws you even burning a copy of your own CD - which is just stupid.

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