Since the Great Computer Cleansing, as I've taken to calling it, on Friday I've come to the conclusion that I need to back up all my PDFs on discs so that I don't have to worry about it all getting dumped when I do this again next year. Now if I only had two or three PDFs I wouldn't worry about it but I have quite a bit more. In fact, I have over 70 gigs worth of just PDFs on my computer.
I know what you're saying, "You have a problem, dude. Seriously, why do you have that many? And do you really expect to read all of them?"
First, shut up. I don't have a problem. You have the damned problem.
Second I have so many because the Internet Archive is the single greatest collection of scanned, downloadable books I've ever run across. I disappear in there about once a month looking for a book on some esoteric topic and come back with twenty or so related books that I can read. Like when I was working on the Cartographer's Toolkit I went in there looking for the Royal Geographer's Society's handbook. I came out with twenty PDFs of their meeting notes, tips, and correspondences.
Look I know it's a . . . thing. But there's something incredibly satisfying about having these books at hand. I mean, let's face it, I may never be able to travel to the Cambridge University to actually look at a real copy of some of these books but I can have a scanned copy on my hard drive. For me that's the next best thing.