Running and Managing a Personal Library

[Xarpho's Return]

Did you guys see the news story a few weeks back, where some housewife got all in a tizzy where a jeet came and started taking all the books. Apparently jeets like to do this, so they can sell them for $3/each + $20 shipping or something. I can't find the link again, unfortunately. It was a real hoot.

There was one where some absolute madlad was putting print copies of The Breeds of Sneeds & The ABCs of CRT by one "Doctor Süss" into LFLs. (Kiwi thread link).

 

[mr_negativity]

All I can say is ahoy mateys... You can download entire bibliographies of your favorite mass market author on from torrents in epub or mobi format. Kindle e-ink based devices will still seamlessly work with your pirate ebook collection with calibre. Free epub and mobi viewers on android aren't going away either.

1 TB of text in digital could keep you reading and rereading for the rest of your lifetime. The lifetime works of your favorite author take far less space than archiving a single youtube video. Learn how to backup your collection properly.

Paper is got it's appeal. There is the texture, smell, variations in type facing and format unique to each publication. Digital can be bland and homogeneous. If this is a graphic novel, paper does have an edge. Reading comics on digital doesn't work nearly as well. Once you become an old fuck and need a 100 watt light bulb and a pair of reading glasses to read a simple paperback novel, a self illuminated digital device with adjustable font sizes where you can read anywhere becomes the best thing since sliced bread. Digital is infinitely replictable. Minus some post apocalypse scenario where digital devices can no longer function, digital has an edge.

If audio books are your thing, aside from torrents, your favorite audiobook may be on youtube because audiobook publishers are behind the curve on content id. Run yt-dlp -x and archive. Audio books on CD are still common in public libraries and are available on inter library loan. Feel free to rip the audio cds and transcode to mp3/ogg and add to your personal collection. Your local public library may offer free access to audio books via Overdrive/Hoopla Go ahead and use the analog hole to copy the audio. Audiobooks are awesome. You can listen while working on the clock in your job of drudgery.

Niche stuff like if you are into neoreactionary texts, then collecting pulp may be your only option.

One final warning... Don't idolize books. Just because someone got a book published doesn't mean it is a truth. In the age of social media and blatantly biased journalism on the web and on TV it's tempting to think that old, slow tech like print media is better. Someone published Al Gore's "Earth in the balance" . You gave an autist hundreds of pages to express a rant. Nick Rekieta could write a book about how the criminal justice system fucked him and how he was innocent. 90% of books about politics are dated and useless beyond a few years of publishing.

Great literary works are transcendent and express universal themes beyond current day. These are the ones you add to your permanent collection and share with others.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

If one wants to do long term digital, spinning platter hard drives (not solid state) are the way to go, with as much redundancy as you can afford.

HDDs have their own problems in that they're sensitive. You can't drop it, you can't shake it, you can't even tilt it while it's running, it has to remain stationary and left in an earthquake proof container to maintain its reliability.

Weren't they experimenting with some sort of quartz drive years ago that was supposed to replace the HDD as the standard data storage utility?

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

There was one where some absolute madlad was putting print copies of The Breeds of Sneeds & The ABCs of CRT by one "Doctor Süss" into LFLs. (Kiwi thread link).

Maybe we need to do some Stable Diffusion art in the YA-dystopia style for The Turner Diaries cover.

 

[RaxxScholar]

ok so we've got book hoarding down. how do we put it into a format that is distributable wether on/off grid, how do we distribute it, and finally how do we keep the dreggs from corrupting it.

I'm partial to the idea of holding onto this information for a case where the internet is disrupted at the very least, so that's the scenario im basing all my ideas on.

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

how do we put it into a format that is distributable wether

One of the simplest things we might do, is just come up with a bibliography (or several). Sometimes it's a good start to know what it is that you need. A list of books wouldn't cause any copyright lawyering, and let's people know what they need to look for. This might even be annotated well enough that the user would know which ones are "readily available", which ones are for purchase only. And if someone set up a torrent of them, anonymously, that would make it even easier.

I've been trying to do this for myself lately in regards to metal-working/machine-shop/smithing/welding. Some of these are high quality (not scans, but born-digital PDFs), and they're humongous. 150mbytes+

It would be a big effort to do it right, I think.

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

I haven't heard of UDC, and it seems interesting. Thanks for sharing. Can you provide a fuller example of the classification system in action for your library?

Sorry for the late response. It took awhile to get things together. UDC is based off of Dewey, but makes subtle/essential changes for a modern library. I think the latest edition is the 23rd or maybe 24th. It consists of two heavy volumes of microscopic text on gigantic pages, a thousand of them per book (or more). You can download both off of Libgen, they're maybe 100 megs each? I forget. They now encourage you to use their web app, which is $300/year for a single seat.

They have a seven day trial. About 8 years ago, I used it... and monkey-patched the javascript function downloading each new xhr, and had it save those to a file. Then I modified that function to just load the local file instead of downloading (each uniquely named). But I still had to click the "next page" button, and I apparently missed a few back then, so you'll be clicking along trying to find something and just get the big Firefox error page in the iframe.

A couple of weeks ago, I got another seven day trial with a different email, and carefully downloaded every single paginated data file. Spent the whole week figuring out how to do it, barely verified I had it all before it expired. Instead of the data just being more html pages that load into an iframe, I parsed them all to json, took a week to clean it and make adjustments. And, though it's not quite working right this second, I can now implement the search feature and a few fancier things. All the code/style is in a single file (just load it into a tab), but the data's still somewhat big (11 megs for the listings), so I have that in an external file (three, really) rather than inline. Bet you didn't know someone could pirate web apps?

https://mega.nz/folder/7JsjFKxZ#5IQBmojjGvXVspE4-bwh7Q

I have the old one in there for comparison, in case anyone wants to see it. I will continue to update the new one as I have time.

As for how I use this, it's not that crazy or complicated.

For me, it's just a guide on what to name folders. Where UDC nests these too deeply, I try to flatten a bit. I try to have a convention of file naming, I basically do title - identifiers - author list.

 

[Casshern]

ok so we've got book hoarding down. how do we put it into a format that is distributable wether on/off grid, how do we distribute it, and finally how do we keep the dreggs from corrupting it.

I'm partial to the idea of holding onto this information for a case where the internet is disrupted at the very least, so that's the scenario im basing all my ideas on.

There’s a few ways, but it depends on your usecase. If the Internet turns into many internets, then shadow libraries are still the go-to. Tor makes them constantly accessible and hidden from law enforcement if worst comes to worst there. However, if the Internet/internets go out completely, then it’s a question of local distribution, where programs such as Calibre is key. Local networks will still be possible, and a curated library of books that people can access from within your house is great.

Finally though, we have the most secure method, which is to print the books out yourself. Lots of ways you can do this, can even bind the books yourself. This is a compromise for digital books that are too expensive to get otherwise, and a perfect hobby as well.

Although, for people who don’t know what to fill a library with, I make the assertion that every American library should start with the Harvard Classics. Made when Harvard was respectable, this is a book series focused on the most important books of Western literature, excluding fiction due to brevity and mainstays such as the Holy Bible, which were assumed to be within the home already. Physical copies can be had for around $6-10 a book, and look truly fantastic on a bookshelf, although many of the Greco-Roman translations are less than stellar as this was over 100 years ago.

 

[KiwiFuzz2]

Can't use your Kindle to insulate your house, fortify your windows, protect against an atomic blast, burn for fire, or wipe your ass with.

BookChads FTW.