Help me identify this novel

[Euphonious Polemic]

I can't remember the author or title, but here's the gist of the story:

It's a Science Fiction novel set in the near future. Almost all information is now on a "super-web" and this is where everyone goes to conduct research. The academic libraries of the world are not used anymore, and all of the material in them is virtually useless. It would take too much effort to convert them all to digital format individually.

A company has come up with a method to digitize the books and manuscripts - they shred the books and fire the bits through a tunnel that is lined with micro cameras. The cameras take pictures of the flying shreds and then a computer algorithm puts the information together again. Unfortunately, this results in the destruction of the book.

The novel works with this theme, and the factions that are pitted either for or against this concept.

The first correct answer wins....... admiration and respect from all.

ETA: Or is it even a novel at all? novella? It may have been in a "best of" collection...

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by Euphonious Polemic

A company has come up with a method to digitize the books and manuscripts - they shred the books and fire the bits through a tunnel that is lined with micro cameras. The cameras take pictures of the flying shreds and then a computer algorithm puts the information together again. Unfortunately, this results in the destruction of the book.

This is one of the main plots of RAINBOW'S END by Vernor Vinge; not sure if that's what you're looking for. Was there a character who only appeared in virtual form, and took the form of Bugs Bunny throughout?

(Also, this thread is probably moving to Cafe Society).

[Euphonious Polemic]

Bingo.

No need to move the thread anywhere. Tom Scud gets the prize in 4 minutes.

Thanks!

[Colibri]

In case anyone wants to discuss this further, I am moving it to CS from GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Chronos]

The story obviously takes it to an extreme, but the process of digitizing books does often in fact destroy the original. You don't shred it, but you do cut off the binding so you can lay the pages flat on a scanner.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Chronos

The story obviously takes it to an extreme, but the process of digitizing books does often in fact destroy the original. You don't shred it, but you do cut off the binding so you can lay the pages flat on a scanner.

I don't believe they need to do that with the latest technology. In fact, I'm sure not.

Previous scanning technology required that books be unbound so that pages would be flat for photographing and so that they could be fed automatically through the scanning machine. If books were not unbound, flattening them on the scanner glass was very damaging to the spines and binding, and required a person to position each page on the scanning surface. Scanning is now done with digital cameras pointing at open but bound books, and software acts on the digital images to adjust for the curvature of the open page, making the image flat even though the book is not. Software also allows the scanning of text and illustrations together, adjusting resolution and other characteristics as needed. These improvements mean that less human intervention is needed, but in addition the scanning technology and OCR technology is faster than ever before. Scan rates are advertised as from 1200 pages per hour to 3000 pages per hour. Images are captured at 600 DPI. This means that scanning produces large files: one page can be 20 megabytes, and a book can easily be 6 gigabytes, but the improvement in hard drive technology over the last decade means that the scanning systems can handle the files that result from the scanning activity.

And that article's from 2006.

[Little Nemo]

I've also seen specialized scanners that are designed for bound books. They have a screen that has a sixty degree angle in the middle of it. This allows you to lay the pages flat against the screen without damaging the book's spine. The scanning hardware is designed to track though the angle.