a million monkeys typing

Words, Fading Away…

Posted October 6th, 2004 at 07:52am

Recently, I was annoyed to discover that the last six books I’ve wanted to purchase are all out of print. One is by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and a man whose works I would have figured to never see the end of print. Another tome, related to my recent surge of interest in the Great Detective and his author, is a famous collection of essays. A third book is on dinosaurs and paleontology, written in the 1970’s –a seminal piece highly regarded by many experts. The final three are an anthology of Soviet science fiction, a retrospective on the life and art of Alfred Hitchcock, and a volume on the medieval and cultural history of Brittany, France. What do all these books have in common?

All six books are cultural discards, items of once-great importance (at least in certain circles) whose conception and aspect defined or illustrated the leading edge of thought, science, history or art, if only for a few years, before their ideas were no longer revolutionary or popular. Then, like the passages of Shakespeare that have become so commonplace as to be boring, they became mere footnotes to our history that few people ever bother to read.

The next time your local library has a discard sale, stop by and browse the titles. You’ll see all manner of books that have been ousted from their shelves because of an idea no longer popular, of a trend whose time has come and gone, of stories no longer pertinent to this exact date and time. Let this thought rattle around your brain for a while: many of these books will never see print again. These words won’t be stamped by a press, won’t be collected in anthologies, won’t be reworked in new editions, won’t even be saved on some archival CD-ROM somewhere. They will vanish like so much smoke, and the words and thoughts and labours of these passionate authors will never be seen by human eyes again. A thousand legacies are lost every day.

This is not to say Sirs Arthur or Hitchcock will not become trendy again one day. And of course, there are a million texts residing in archives and databases that were part of vast print runs, and that will, after copyright expires, probably meander their way to an Internet site somewhere for free or inexpensive release to all who desire them. But for every classic that is preserved, there are thousands that slip between the cracks and disappear from our collective memory. Ask any scholar, university student, or person with a passion for a niche, and they will tell you of the many hundreds of out-of-print books that they tried to find without success.

Aside from the scholastic and cultural viewpoints, there’s a personal angle as well. Let’s say your great-grandfather penned a book. Wouldn’t you want to read his words, learn about his world view, enjoy his turns of phrase, and wonder aloud at how the story’s love interest might have actually been your great-grandmother? And his words, no matter how much they mean to you, will probably mean much more to somebody else, somewhere. Any arrow, fired randomly into the air, will eventually find its target.

So what can we do about losing these works forever? The answer –it would seem– is quite simple, given today’s technology. There are many pieces of software that perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and all you need is a low-cost ($50) scanner to start inputting books into digital archives, pictures and all. “But,” you say (like any good citizen duly concerned with intellectual property), “isn’t it improper to steal the works of others like this?” Well, there is, if I recall correctly, the notion of creating limited copies for personal use, not to be distributed, which is why there are photocopiers in every library. Scanning works now, along with all the pertinent facts about authors, publishers, copyright dates, classifications, etc., will preserve these books before we lose them forever. If we were to upload these personal copies to an institution that can act as a “digital vault” for them, once the copyright ends, they can be released and read by all. Likewise, publishers producing new books can do the same, and submit the texts to this trusted vault for archival purposes. There are already some institutions which gather books, such as the US Library of Congress, but these books are all-but-inaccessible to the masses, and the acidic paper they are printed on has a relatively short life span. Digitally, they can live forever, and be freely distributed at little-to-no cost.

The concept needn’t stop there: how about music, radio series, television programs, films? Well, these do take up tremendous amounts of digital space, and are probably not feasible at the moment — comparatively, text takes next to no space, and even a regular CD-ROM can store hundreds of books. But this doesn’t mean it isn’t an option for other media in the near future.

Meanwhile, we should endeavour to save the books we have. I know I have collected many literary oddities over the years, and intend to take a few hours every now and then to create digital versions. If they were ever lost in a fire, I should never see those words again, and my heart would be broken. In my library alone, I’m sure I have at least 500 books both out of print and very difficult to find in any form. While for me, nothing replaces the sight, smell and tactile sensations of a real honest-to-goodness paper book, at least if we save the words, books can be made from them again in the future. And while no digital vault currently exists, perhaps we can pursuade some enlightened institute to act as gatherer and gatekeeper in the next few years.

Meanwhile, the next time you stumble across a neglected volume at a discard sale, peruse the words and see if they mean enough to you to save for future generations. If they do, plunk down your quarter, take it home, and think about preserving those words forever. Else, they’ll wind up in a historical landfill.