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Comment by ndiddy

5 days ago

> In one of the first articles that I saw about this topic they were describing a scenario where a botany manuscript from the 19th century that only had three remaining copies was being digitized and then pulped.

That was something that someone on Twitter made up and then got quoted in an article. All of the books being scanned have ISBNs, meaning they're from 1970 or later. The books being sold off are rare in the sense that there aren't many copies in circulation, but they aren't priceless artifacts. If they were, they'd be being sold individually at high prices by boutique booksellers rather than being sold by the pallet by wholesalers. It's going to mostly be stuff like "The Best Places to Eat in Milwaukee, 1992 edition" or "The 2006 Guide to the Stock Market" or "Teach Yourself Visual Basic 3.0 in 28 Days".