"Instant" Philatelic Learning And The Future Of Our Hobby

Not if you belong to the APS. APRL is without a doubt the premier library for philatelic material, full of the "extrememely difficult and expensive to access" material you refer to. And if you belong to the APS, they will send such material to you to utilize in your research, and you send it back. For someone who wants access to such material, this is the #1 reason for joining the APS. I've used it multiple times.

Considering the time/money involved in collecting the original material and supporting background data ... then the effort and expense in publishing a philatelic book ... the cost of buying a book containing the lifetime knowledge of a specialized collector is so incredibly cheap. Don't hesitate to invest in the published knowledge of others. It pays back the cost in short time.

On the other flip side of the coin, I find myself periodically burning (recycle) books that I buy and then digitize. I do this for a number of reasons.
- I am not going to force my wife and family to deal with tonnage of hardcopy books when I pass.
- it allows me to search and find information exponentially faster than physically locating and paging to the information in a hardcopy
- it allows me to have the digitized book read to me by any number of devices. This helped when I sat in dialysis for 15-20 hours a week and was unable to move my arms. I also anticipate it helping greatly when my eyesight deteriorates more than it already has.
- I cannot trust what will happen after I pass, I assume that the digitized version of the books I own will survive beyond my own life. If I did not destroy the original hardcopies, there would be a very good chance that the two versions would begin to circulate. It is important to me to honor copyright laws both now and what might happen after I am no longer around.

I think it is a shame that authors do not also publish digitally and offer their works in both formats.

On a different tangent, there are a number of rare, many 'one of' hardcopy books sitting in private hands, in restricted areas of libraries, and distant countries that makes them totally inaccessible to virtually everyone.

Libraries tend to be very conservative about digitizing their holdings due to copyright laws, costs and other resource requirements.
Don

I have to ask Don, because I'm sure something's been lost in translation here

Are you saying you obtain a book, digitize it and then move it on, or are you saying you physically destroy the original book (original hardcopies?) once it has been digitized?

Being a bibliophile, I get uncomfortable when I see the words burning and books together

I have digitized non-public domain books and then destroyed them; currently I have a pretty big sack of stuff in the 'recycle/burn' pile. When I say 'burn' I typically mean using them as fireplace/wood stove starter material.
Right now I have a pretty big pile of philatelic material to recycle/burn. It includes some digitized stuff like catalogs but also other public domain material like 90+ 1920s Weekly Philatelic Gossip and 100+ USPS catalogs. I hate that this stuff is being destroyed but I have few other options.
Don

Thanks for the clarification Don, but I think my heart just broke a little bit

I would never destroyed truly rare items, in a few cases I have passed up digitizing them (which is a different kind of 'sin'). Luckily the vast majority of really rare material that has come my way is public domain and I can easily find others who will take the hard copies.

I truly hope that authors/publishers consider offering both versions of their efforts, they are not risking losing money with digital versions. More and more people like myself are digitizing their libraries and finding themselves in the same position; either destroy their hardcopies or break the law. Only offering low production runs of hardcopy books is not protecting their income nor is it good for philately.

This is just another impact of the world changing around us and the need to change with it. I used to love my little hardcopy library, sitting in a chair and curling up for a good read. But in the confluence of getting older with deteriorating health combined with better digitization technology has resulted in this sticky dilemma.
Don

Me too