A friend once told me he expected his parents to give him a book for his birthday. Which book? He didn't know or really care: "It will be a first edition, as they know I like first editions." Whereas I take the Project Gutenberg view, that it's the text itself that matters, not the physical artifact of the book. I'd love to digitize all those books that nobody looks at, as maybe in five hundred years time the work of that forgotten one-act playwright will be rediscovered. At the very least, as you say, LLMs could be enriched by training on them.
What I love about the Gladstone Library, Hawarden, is that Gladstone had read and annotated most of them and all the books are there to be used and read. All you need to do is apply for a Readers card.
I took your mum to Gladfest there about 7-8 years ago and she really connected with a poet who'd written about the death of his daughter. He signed his book for her and they hugged. I've got the book on my shelf now.
A friend once told me he expected his parents to give him a book for his birthday. Which book? He didn't know or really care: "It will be a first edition, as they know I like first editions." Whereas I take the Project Gutenberg view, that it's the text itself that matters, not the physical artifact of the book. I'd love to digitize all those books that nobody looks at, as maybe in five hundred years time the work of that forgotten one-act playwright will be rediscovered. At the very least, as you say, LLMs could be enriched by training on them.
My mum once asked a student whether she'd like a book for Christmas. The student replied, "No thanks, I've already got one."
What I love about the Gladstone Library, Hawarden, is that Gladstone had read and annotated most of them and all the books are there to be used and read. All you need to do is apply for a Readers card.
I took your mum to Gladfest there about 7-8 years ago and she really connected with a poet who'd written about the death of his daughter. He signed his book for her and they hugged. I've got the book on my shelf now.
That's as it should be - but I still wonder how many of those books are ever actually read.