8 ms·

Librarians tired of being accused of hiding secret books that were made up by AI

88 points by vitalnodo 9mo ago

the-mitr 9mo ago
this is a good example of what a post-truth world looks like.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
Original source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-slop-is-spurring-record-requests-for-imaginary-journals/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-slop-is-spurri...
sajb 9mo ago
This seems to have a simple solution - if you can't find any reference to a particular book by googling its title, then it likely does not exist.
- wakawaka28 9mo ago
  It depends on the title. Many titles are difficult to search for.
- Krasnol 9mo ago
  The problem is that this solution runs counter to what is expected from AI customers today: subscribe and turn off your brain. (Yes, I know about the phrases written below every singe one of them. They're probably being taken just as seriously as ToS.)
- nephihaha 9mo ago
  You have too much faith in Commissar Google. I know of numerous books which don't appear on Google. Likely the tip of the iceberg.
khalic 9mo ago
Ah Gizmodo, always the paragon of good journalism. The person has explicitly asked her tweets not be used in external websites, and of course this zombie tabloid doesn't give a damn
- AndrewDucker 9mo ago
  The post they quoted is the one that's marked as "do not share".
- nkrisc 9mo ago
  It’s a request, and requests may be denied or ignored. If they cared, they wouldn’t post publicly or the service would not allow that message to embedded. An enforceable request is called a “demand”, and unless you’re actually capable of enforcing it, it is in fact still just a request. It would have been polite to honor the request, but they are under no obligation to do so. Don’t make public posts if you don’t want them publicly displayed.
  - cl0ckt0wer 9mo ago
    To paraphrase, you're not wrong, you're just a jerk.
    - nkrisc 9mo ago
      “Please don’t show people my public post” is an absurd request to make. Why can the post even be embedded at all in this case? If Gizmodo was forced to screenshot it to circumvent that you might have a point.
      - kachapopopow 9mo ago
        just because something is public doesn't mean it should be shared with everyone, imagine you and your (ex: facebook group) have a nice spot near a public lake that you worked to clean up and even put a nice fireplace / furniture around it and then some tiktoker comes and says check out this amazing spot and now it's ruined. Yes it's public, anyone outside the group can find and see it, but it's clearly meant to be enjoyed by the people who made it or/and happened to come across it by chance.
Daub 9mo ago
Of course, what we need now is for someone to store those books. A book being catalogued before it has been written - a cool idea.
- lkramer 9mo ago
  it shows there is a demand!
markus_zhang 9mo ago
Ah they are hiding Necronomicon again.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
  To be fair, the original title was Azathoth Traditional Cooking, by Chef Abdul, and is often listed under "Domestic Arts."
ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
I wonder if lawyers will try to sue law libraries that don't have hallucinated case histories.
63282836292919 9mo ago
I had hoped that Gawker rag was finally shut down for good.
WillAdams 9mo ago
A library which was known for having a "last policy" system in place, should not have this difficulty. I would further argue that any library should be willing to accept a copy of any book which they do not have and safely store it until someone wishes to borrow it. I'm still salty that I had to buy a copy of Glenn Reid's _Thinking in PostScript_ when a local library discarded it from their stacks (there are other books which I would check out semi-regularly which have also been discarded which I also need to purchase, but missed seeing on their "discarded" table or at the annual library sale). Yes, this would require better funding, and yes, I regularly donate to my local library every year.
- yesfitz 9mo ago
  Not sure if you've already explored this avenue, but you can usually request media that your library doesn't have through the interlibrary loan[1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlibrary_loan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlibrary_loan
  - WillAdams 9mo ago
    Yes, but the principle here is that a library (system) should function as a repository for physical embodiments of knowledge, and should not be discarding books. We're going through this at my workplace as well, converting from cubicles to an open floor plan, so workspaces which had decades of accumulated books are being cleared out --- I've rescued as many as I can justify from the recycling bin, but that's a tiny portion, so I'm feeling this sort of decision quite viscerally.
    - yesfitz 9mo ago
      I think the library system does a good job of that. For example, here's the WorldCat entry for Thinking in PostScript[1] that shows its 4 editions physically available at 107 libraries. It's also available as an eBook and (since 2024) on Archive.org[2] Which highlights why Archive.org is so important as an archival and lending library. It's like the idealized version of microfiche. The content of the books have been made so small that not only can they be trivially stored, but beamed to your pocket at any time, almost anywhere in the world. There are at least ~158 Million books in existence as of 2023[3], and between 2 and 4 million added every year. To ask that each library be an unopinionated store of physical books is too much, and reduces their function to a well-organized warehouse, when the real power of libraries are its librarians. They are research specialists available to anyone and everyone, and well worth a conversation the next time you want to know just about anything. 1: https://search.worldcat.org/title/22114396 https://search.worldcat.org/title/22114396 2: https://archive.org/details/thinkinginpostsc0000reid https://archive.org/details/thinkinginpostsc0000reid 3: https://isbndb.com/blog/how-many-books-are-in-the-world/ https://isbndb.com/blog/how-many-books-are-in-the-world/
wccrawford 9mo ago
The "magic" of why AI is trusted over humans is that so many humans are terrible at their jobs that people default to not trusting someone who is telling them something they don't want to hear. The AI always tells them what they want to hear, and so they trust it. It's not magic.
- lapcat 9mo ago
  > so many humans are terrible at their jobs Is there any empirical evidence that librarians are terrible at their jobs? The reason is not the supposed fallibility of humans but rather the supposed infallibility of technology. Nontechnical people don't know how the technology works, don't know how the sausage is made, and they mistakenly assume it can't go wrong, just like a calculator can't go wrong. Also, people are not good at revising their beliefs. A lot depends on what they hear first, and they usually hear from the internet before they hear from an expert, because it's easier and faster to consult the former. It's embarrassing to admit to yourself that you were suckered into believing something false, so the emotional coping mechanism is to get angry at the person who contradicts your beliefs, which preserves your self-respect.
faidit 9mo ago
Quick, someone found a startup called Vibrary and hire vibrarians (I mean, spin up some agentic tablets on wheels) to generate these books on demand for people who request them, working backwards from the halluci-citations. Lawyers will love it! Forgeries were common for thousands of years after all. The last few hundred years of "truth" was a glitch waiting to be patched.
josefritzishere 9mo ago
AI is complete garbage. It is so tiring that anyone sees any potential in this absurdly expensive trash heap of code.
rich_sasha 9mo ago
On another "news" website, a ring of librarians hiding secret books sentenced to death by US prime minister and both presidents.
thrill 9mo ago
“The citation seems to have been included in many lower quality papers—likely due to laziness and sloppiness rather than an intent to deceive.” Yeah … no. If you use a citation and you didn’t read the article yourself then it is absolutely intentional deception, and it should be treated as such.
ggm 9mo ago
Who knew Borges library of babel is just yield()
Guestmodinfo 9mo ago
Librarians do hide books. But not as a way of hiding from public but as a way of not throwing them away. Let me explain. Even though libraries are very big still they run out of space and regularly throw out (in India because most don't care) / ( or in Texas sell out books cheaply) and it pains the librarians deeply so they kind of stash books secretly from being thrown away. And if you really show interest in a particular book and request it nicely then the librarian will give it to you and tell you not to tell anyone. Why I know this because it happened to me in my college library in India. I can still after decades remember the love of books on that librarian's face
- CJefferson 9mo ago
  Almost every library regularly throws out books, and all librarians I know are happy with this. New books arrive regularly, and unless you plan on your library growing unlimited, you need to, in general, a 1 in 1 out policy.
- nephihaha 9mo ago
  They used to say that one of the chief roles of a librarian was to keep people away from books. There is a lot of truth in that.
- WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
  Libraries remove unborrowed books and sell them. Borrowed books stay on the shelf. That's what they do with books.
  - Guestmodinfo 9mo ago
    Judging books by their unborrowedness is like judging a youtube video's educational content by its view count. It's a bad reality created by the powers that be
    - CJefferson 9mo ago
      Why have shelves full of books that haven’t been borrowed in 15 years? what benefit is that providing?
k310 9mo ago
I visited the local library (California foothills) during a “book sale”, and what didn’t sell was left out in boxes, either for cheap or free. What didn’t move was destined for the landfill. I was aghast, but without enough room to take in the strays. Real estate is unforgiving. I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed. They offer plans to build little libraries, and I hope to build some. “Owner” will have to build the supports, though. [0] https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > I am in favor of “little free libraries” Do these work for kids' books? Whenever I've seen them geared towards adults, the content is absolute crap.
  - mschild 9mo ago
    You get of what you put in. (Sort of) I had a lot of good books that I finished reading and wouldn't realistically touch again. Whenever I went to browse for some books I would leave one of them in exchange. Over time, the quality went up because other people started doing the same. To be honest, I did curate the available books at it as well. Obvious crap (self-published conspiracy theory stuff) was thrown out. At some point you will also have to simple throw out some old ones if they never get taken. Space is limited and a 50 year old book that is collecting dust is not useful to anyone.
  - kasey_junk 9mo ago
    It takes the right sort of library owner to curate the library and a community amenable to helping out. My wife runs our library and one thing she does is pulls out some books when the library is flush and puts them back in when it’s a little dry. But she works in the book industry so she also has a source of high quality books and knowledge about them. She’s specifically a children’s book person, so we made sure our library could fit kids books (picture books are big). But many of the kits won’t. We also live in a walkable college town. There are 5 libraries within 4 blocks of ours. Our neighbors take it upon themselves to clean up and donate. We came back from our Christmas break to someone having installed a motion activated light in the library! So under the right conditions they work. But you know what works better? Professional librarians, with appropriate resources and facilities. But in all cases, free libraries, public libraries, research libraries, etc. deaccessioning is required so sad for the op, we throw books away.
zippyman55 9mo ago
Libraries are overwhelmed in their inability to store all the "good" books. I was cleaning out my book collection of, what I thought are really good books, but I came to the realization there is no space for them. So, they get sold or pulped.

88 points by vitalnodo 9mo ago

this is a good example of what a post-truth world looks like.

Original source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-slop-is-spurring-record-requests-for-imaginary-journals/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-slop-is-spurri...

sajb 9mo ago

This seems to have a simple solution - if you can't find any reference to a particular book by googling its title, then it likely does not exist.

wakawaka28 9mo ago
It depends on the title. Many titles are difficult to search for.
Krasnol 9mo ago
The problem is that this solution runs counter to what is expected from AI customers today: subscribe and turn off your brain. (Yes, I know about the phrases written below every singe one of them. They're probably being taken just as seriously as ToS.)
nephihaha 9mo ago
You have too much faith in Commissar Google. I know of numerous books which don't appear on Google. Likely the tip of the iceberg.

khalic 9mo ago

Ah Gizmodo, always the paragon of good journalism. The person has explicitly asked her tweets not be used in external websites, and of course this zombie tabloid doesn't give a damn

AndrewDucker 9mo ago
The post they quoted is the one that's marked as "do not share".
nkrisc 9mo ago
It’s a request, and requests may be denied or ignored. If they cared, they wouldn’t post publicly or the service would not allow that message to embedded. An enforceable request is called a “demand”, and unless you’re actually capable of enforcing it, it is in fact still just a request. It would have been polite to honor the request, but they are under no obligation to do so. Don’t make public posts if you don’t want them publicly displayed.
- cl0ckt0wer 9mo ago
  To paraphrase, you're not wrong, you're just a jerk.
  - nkrisc 9mo ago
    “Please don’t show people my public post” is an absurd request to make. Why can the post even be embedded at all in this case? If Gizmodo was forced to screenshot it to circumvent that you might have a point.
    - kachapopopow 9mo ago
      just because something is public doesn't mean it should be shared with everyone, imagine you and your (ex: facebook group) have a nice spot near a public lake that you worked to clean up and even put a nice fireplace / furniture around it and then some tiktoker comes and says check out this amazing spot and now it's ruined. Yes it's public, anyone outside the group can find and see it, but it's clearly meant to be enjoyed by the people who made it or/and happened to come across it by chance.

Daub 9mo ago

Of course, what we need now is for someone to store those books. A book being catalogued before it has been written - a cool idea.

lkramer 9mo ago
it shows there is a demand!

markus_zhang 9mo ago

Ah they are hiding Necronomicon again.

ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
To be fair, the original title was Azathoth Traditional Cooking, by Chef Abdul, and is often listed under "Domestic Arts."

ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago

I wonder if lawyers will try to sue law libraries that don't have hallucinated case histories.

63282836292919 9mo ago

I had hoped that Gawker rag was finally shut down for good.

WillAdams 9mo ago

A library which was known for having a "last policy" system in place, should not have this difficulty. I would further argue that any library should be willing to accept a copy of any book which they do not have and safely store it until someone wishes to borrow it. I'm still salty that I had to buy a copy of Glenn Reid's _Thinking in PostScript_ when a local library discarded it from their stacks (there are other books which I would check out semi-regularly which have also been discarded which I also need to purchase, but missed seeing on their "discarded" table or at the annual library sale). Yes, this would require better funding, and yes, I regularly donate to my local library every year.

yesfitz 9mo ago
Not sure if you've already explored this avenue, but you can usually request media that your library doesn't have through the interlibrary loan[1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlibrary_loan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlibrary_loan
- WillAdams 9mo ago
  Yes, but the principle here is that a library (system) should function as a repository for physical embodiments of knowledge, and should not be discarding books. We're going through this at my workplace as well, converting from cubicles to an open floor plan, so workspaces which had decades of accumulated books are being cleared out --- I've rescued as many as I can justify from the recycling bin, but that's a tiny portion, so I'm feeling this sort of decision quite viscerally.
  - yesfitz 9mo ago
    I think the library system does a good job of that. For example, here's the WorldCat entry for Thinking in PostScript[1] that shows its 4 editions physically available at 107 libraries. It's also available as an eBook and (since 2024) on Archive.org[2] Which highlights why Archive.org is so important as an archival and lending library. It's like the idealized version of microfiche. The content of the books have been made so small that not only can they be trivially stored, but beamed to your pocket at any time, almost anywhere in the world. There are at least ~158 Million books in existence as of 2023[3], and between 2 and 4 million added every year. To ask that each library be an unopinionated store of physical books is too much, and reduces their function to a well-organized warehouse, when the real power of libraries are its librarians. They are research specialists available to anyone and everyone, and well worth a conversation the next time you want to know just about anything. 1: https://search.worldcat.org/title/22114396 https://search.worldcat.org/title/22114396 2: https://archive.org/details/thinkinginpostsc0000reid https://archive.org/details/thinkinginpostsc0000reid 3: https://isbndb.com/blog/how-many-books-are-in-the-world/ https://isbndb.com/blog/how-many-books-are-in-the-world/

wccrawford 9mo ago

The "magic" of why AI is trusted over humans is that so many humans are terrible at their jobs that people default to not trusting someone who is telling them something they don't want to hear. The AI always tells them what they want to hear, and so they trust it. It's not magic.

lapcat 9mo ago
> so many humans are terrible at their jobs Is there any empirical evidence that librarians are terrible at their jobs? The reason is not the supposed fallibility of humans but rather the supposed infallibility of technology. Nontechnical people don't know how the technology works, don't know how the sausage is made, and they mistakenly assume it can't go wrong, just like a calculator can't go wrong. Also, people are not good at revising their beliefs. A lot depends on what they hear first, and they usually hear from the internet before they hear from an expert, because it's easier and faster to consult the former. It's embarrassing to admit to yourself that you were suckered into believing something false, so the emotional coping mechanism is to get angry at the person who contradicts your beliefs, which preserves your self-respect.

faidit 9mo ago

Quick, someone found a startup called Vibrary and hire vibrarians (I mean, spin up some agentic tablets on wheels) to generate these books on demand for people who request them, working backwards from the halluci-citations. Lawyers will love it! Forgeries were common for thousands of years after all. The last few hundred years of "truth" was a glitch waiting to be patched.

josefritzishere 9mo ago

AI is complete garbage. It is so tiring that anyone sees any potential in this absurdly expensive trash heap of code.

rich_sasha 9mo ago

On another "news" website, a ring of librarians hiding secret books sentenced to death by US prime minister and both presidents.

thrill 9mo ago

“The citation seems to have been included in many lower quality papers—likely due to laziness and sloppiness rather than an intent to deceive.” Yeah … no. If you use a citation and you didn’t read the article yourself then it is absolutely intentional deception, and it should be treated as such.

ggm 9mo ago

Who knew Borges library of babel is just yield()

Guestmodinfo 9mo ago

Librarians do hide books. But not as a way of hiding from public but as a way of not throwing them away. Let me explain. Even though libraries are very big still they run out of space and regularly throw out (in India because most don't care) / ( or in Texas sell out books cheaply) and it pains the librarians deeply so they kind of stash books secretly from being thrown away. And if you really show interest in a particular book and request it nicely then the librarian will give it to you and tell you not to tell anyone. Why I know this because it happened to me in my college library in India. I can still after decades remember the love of books on that librarian's face

CJefferson 9mo ago
Almost every library regularly throws out books, and all librarians I know are happy with this. New books arrive regularly, and unless you plan on your library growing unlimited, you need to, in general, a 1 in 1 out policy.
nephihaha 9mo ago
They used to say that one of the chief roles of a librarian was to keep people away from books. There is a lot of truth in that.
WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
Libraries remove unborrowed books and sell them. Borrowed books stay on the shelf. That's what they do with books.
- Guestmodinfo 9mo ago
  Judging books by their unborrowedness is like judging a youtube video's educational content by its view count. It's a bad reality created by the powers that be
  - CJefferson 9mo ago
    Why have shelves full of books that haven’t been borrowed in 15 years? what benefit is that providing?

k310 9mo ago

I visited the local library (California foothills) during a “book sale”, and what didn’t sell was left out in boxes, either for cheap or free. What didn’t move was destined for the landfill. I was aghast, but without enough room to take in the strays. Real estate is unforgiving. I am in favor of “little free libraries” [0] where books circulate freely, and if they aren’t returned, hopefully are read and not destroyed. They offer plans to build little libraries, and I hope to build some. “Owner” will have to build the supports, though. [0] https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> I am in favor of “little free libraries” Do these work for kids' books? Whenever I've seen them geared towards adults, the content is absolute crap.
- mschild 9mo ago
  You get of what you put in. (Sort of) I had a lot of good books that I finished reading and wouldn't realistically touch again. Whenever I went to browse for some books I would leave one of them in exchange. Over time, the quality went up because other people started doing the same. To be honest, I did curate the available books at it as well. Obvious crap (self-published conspiracy theory stuff) was thrown out. At some point you will also have to simple throw out some old ones if they never get taken. Space is limited and a 50 year old book that is collecting dust is not useful to anyone.
- kasey_junk 9mo ago
  It takes the right sort of library owner to curate the library and a community amenable to helping out. My wife runs our library and one thing she does is pulls out some books when the library is flush and puts them back in when it’s a little dry. But she works in the book industry so she also has a source of high quality books and knowledge about them. She’s specifically a children’s book person, so we made sure our library could fit kids books (picture books are big). But many of the kits won’t. We also live in a walkable college town. There are 5 libraries within 4 blocks of ours. Our neighbors take it upon themselves to clean up and donate. We came back from our Christmas break to someone having installed a motion activated light in the library! So under the right conditions they work. But you know what works better? Professional librarians, with appropriate resources and facilities. But in all cases, free libraries, public libraries, research libraries, etc. deaccessioning is required so sad for the op, we throw books away.

zippyman55 9mo ago

Libraries are overwhelmed in their inability to store all the "good" books. I was cleaning out my book collection of, what I thought are really good books, but I came to the realization there is no space for them. So, they get sold or pulped.