It’s indeed depressing to imagine piles of book spines waiting to be fed into wood chippers while torn-out pages are cropped, scanned, and trashed. Google patented a non-destructive book-scanning technology in 2009 that AI firms could use to efficiently scan books—if they were willing to slow down and invest in the process. It’s not perfect, however; studies have found that the curve of the page can distort text, and pages can be missed. Overall, the trade-offs in cost and speed may not appeal to AI firms looking for the cheapest way to scan millions of titles, and Google’s method may not be the best way to handle rare books anyway. The Internet Archive, which helps libraries preserve aging collections, has long understood that scanning old texts takes time and attention to limit handling, and that’s why it’s considered such a human job.