I have a similar situation. I am paying 25 cents to $1 for older textbooks and science subjects at library book sales and other outlets (Better World Books). I enjoy being able to learn a topic from 2 or 3 different sources. I have the most math books-at least 7 versions of things like calculus from 1970-2000 which are around $1 each and when I use them I only need about 15 pages out of them, so destroying makes sense. In a perfect world with free storage I would not destroy them. However, the reason most of these books are so cheap is that people just don't have the room to store them.stearn wrote:All the books I have cut up and scanned are either duplicate copies I bought as I knew constant reference would wear out the first copy, or are cheap books picked up off of ebay or in charity shops. I would hate to be without books around me but see this as a way of having the books I need for reference in an easy searchable form saving time so I can read and enjoy the books I don't want to cut up. I also have room to collect more.
I also had a project I was working on where I would pull all the indexes from the files and try to make them into a giant database.