I just want to share this resource in case people didn’t know it. It describes itself as the world’s largest open-source open-data library. And Includes Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and more.
Anna’s Archive is great. Finding this was a silver lining to the Zlib shutdown. I have it installed to the home screen on my android eink reader and its pretty seamless.
The burning of the library of alexandria causing a loss of a ton of knowledge is basically just a modern meme. Well it has been a bit of a myth for a few centuries but Carl Sagan popularised it in Cosmos and he was quite wrong
There were a ton of libraries all around the classical world, basically every town had one. Alexandria was one of the biggest and most prestigious but you had other huge libraries as well such as the Library of Pergamon which rivalled Alexandria. Also book/scroll collecting was quite popular amongst the upper classes so there would’ve been tons of personal libraries around. Granted they weren’t on the scale of alexandria but when you have libraries in every town, personal collections and then some big libraries that matched Alexandria, not much at all would’ve been unique to just alexandria so there wasn’t much knowledge lost at all, if any.
Plus there’s the fact that there wasn’t even a single ‘burning of alexandria’, there were multiple events over it’s history. There was the big fire with Caesar and it’s agreed a ton of stuff was burnt but they restocked with copies from other libraries and carried on. There’s records of it still in operation in the 3rd century. But before all that the library had been in decline for at least a hundred years anyway as the later Ptolemies didn’t bother providing adequate funding and the library was mismanaged for quite a while with the position of head librarian becoming quite politicised.
What caused the loss of a ton of classical works is the fact that papyrus is pretty shit for preservation as outside of the most dry and arid places it’ll just rot away to after 50-100 years in most conditions.
What classical writings we do have that survives is mostly the result of whatever shit people in medieval times thought was worth copying and recopying over the centuries, recovering palimpsests and the rare actual preserved papyrus finds such as the library of scrolls preserved in Herculaneum. And what we’ve lost is down to two millennia of entropy rather than caesar or Christians burning down a library.
Well I got most of that from reading the Askhistorians subreddit over the years. Dunno if you know about it but it’s a heavily moderated board where the answers have to be in depth and represent recent academical standards. Tons of good shit there. I hope they migrate over to lemmy or kbin soon, I don’t really feel like searching for posts that cover the library there but you should be able to find them easily.
Oh right, lol. Sorry for the big post then. I’m autistic and some things go completely over my head. I’m also prone to rambling on a lot as you might have noticed.
alternatively does anyone have any recommendations for such a device if OP doesn’t respond? I’ve been missing e-ink since my kindle got destroyed several years ago
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Anna’s Archive is great. Finding this was a silver lining to the Zlib shutdown. I have it installed to the home screen on my android eink reader and its pretty seamless.
Zlib shutting down was like the modern equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, but for piracy.
The burning of the library of alexandria causing a loss of a ton of knowledge is basically just a modern meme. Well it has been a bit of a myth for a few centuries but Carl Sagan popularised it in Cosmos and he was quite wrong
There were a ton of libraries all around the classical world, basically every town had one. Alexandria was one of the biggest and most prestigious but you had other huge libraries as well such as the Library of Pergamon which rivalled Alexandria. Also book/scroll collecting was quite popular amongst the upper classes so there would’ve been tons of personal libraries around. Granted they weren’t on the scale of alexandria but when you have libraries in every town, personal collections and then some big libraries that matched Alexandria, not much at all would’ve been unique to just alexandria so there wasn’t much knowledge lost at all, if any.
Plus there’s the fact that there wasn’t even a single ‘burning of alexandria’, there were multiple events over it’s history. There was the big fire with Caesar and it’s agreed a ton of stuff was burnt but they restocked with copies from other libraries and carried on. There’s records of it still in operation in the 3rd century. But before all that the library had been in decline for at least a hundred years anyway as the later Ptolemies didn’t bother providing adequate funding and the library was mismanaged for quite a while with the position of head librarian becoming quite politicised.
What caused the loss of a ton of classical works is the fact that papyrus is pretty shit for preservation as outside of the most dry and arid places it’ll just rot away to after 50-100 years in most conditions.
What classical writings we do have that survives is mostly the result of whatever shit people in medieval times thought was worth copying and recopying over the centuries, recovering palimpsests and the rare actual preserved papyrus finds such as the library of scrolls preserved in Herculaneum. And what we’ve lost is down to two millennia of entropy rather than caesar or Christians burning down a library.
Really interesting! I had a vague idea of the truth of it, any chance you have a source or reccomendation on where to learn more about it?
Well I got most of that from reading the Askhistorians subreddit over the years. Dunno if you know about it but it’s a heavily moderated board where the answers have to be in depth and represent recent academical standards. Tons of good shit there. I hope they migrate over to lemmy or kbin soon, I don’t really feel like searching for posts that cover the library there but you should be able to find them easily.
I know about it. It was just a joke. But good write up
Oh right, lol. Sorry for the big post then. I’m autistic and some things go completely over my head. I’m also prone to rambling on a lot as you might have noticed.
No need to apologize for it!
What android eink reader do you have?
I’ve got an Onyx Boox Leaf2. Pretty happy with it, it’s pricier than a kobo or similar, but not too bad.
I was wondering if it was Onyx. I’ve looked at those and considered them to replace my old Nook…and then the more recent Nooks went on sale.
How long does your battery last on it?
Also curious about this
alternatively does anyone have any recommendations for such a device if OP doesn’t respond? I’ve been missing e-ink since my kindle got destroyed several years ago
I like my Kobo Libra H2O.
I just use my Kindle and convert/import the books with Calibre.
I’ll second Kobo. I replaced my lost kindle with a Kobo Clara 2E and really like it. I think they have an android device, too