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[OC] Academic textbooks being discarded from abandoned university buildings. More photos in post. (media.piefed.social)
submitted 4 days ago* by to c/pics@lemmy.world
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Aberystwyth University closed one of its campuses a few years ago. The place has been left to rot, but recently they’ve started clearing the place out, and removing all the old scientific textbooks. Most of them look untouched. Wonder how much this lot would have set students back if buying new.

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[–] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (7 children)

What university provides textbooks to students? Assuming this isn't AI generated, there is one text dated 1999 - that's way out of date for scientific texts.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    It really depends on the text. An intro thermodynamics textbook is going to still be fine. And some of my college courses were niche enough that we were using textbooks that were over a decade old. Though nearly 30 is pushing it

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago

    Most do? There are higher concentrations of textbooks in some places like the library or bookstore, which do provide textbooks to students, but there will also be a ton of them spread throughout various offices and some classrooms. It's no surprise to me that they could fill multiple dumpsters with just textbooks.

    Though hopefully they don't just trash all the furniture, as there could be millions worth of desks, chairs, tables, and shelving units, depending on how big the school is.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    This...looks very AI to me. Maybe it's not, but it just feels so uncanny.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago*

    Back when I was in school, me and my classmates were once tasked to help clear the old books from the library. There was a big dump truck under the library windows, and we were tasked to, essentially, throw books out of the window.

    You can be damn sure I took some gems with me. Books should not end like this. But also, for a younger me, it was somewhat fun.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Did your university not have a library?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    Not with textbooks. We bought textbooks required for courses. As for books in libraries...a huge number of thick volumes were indexes for manual searching. Modern university libraries are meeting rooms, everything was digitized over a decade ago.

    No thanks to carrying around 15 kilos of physics and chemistry texts, or trying to chase one copy of a book in the library, then finding some ambitious asshole ruined the pages. We no longer waste money on paper journals and binding volumes every year. Old journals just took up space in research buildings. Storing, moving, indexing all that paper costs money.

    I've never assigned a textbook for any of my courses, they are not current enough and science can leap month to month in some fields. Students access primary papers via institution open digital subscriptions. We are saving a lot of shoulder injuries.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago

    My college library has many class texts on the reserve shelf. This allows students who might not be able to afford a personal copy of a text to borrow the text for a few hours or days (depending on the item's lending policy).

    Even when I was an undergrad, the campus library had textbooks on reserve. I mostly used this to access the questions from the current edition of the textbook, so I could use the cheaper previous edition. I promise you, Mechanical Stress Analysis doesn't change much, year to year.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    Today I learned: A textbook is not the same as a book, I suppose it's fair since some books are not primarily focused on text. I hate this language so much it's unreal.

    On: "Modern university libraries are meeting rooms, everything was digitized over a decade ago." This is demonstrably false, I'll upload some photos of my university's library here in two or three weeks when my holidays end.

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