Being an auditor and licensed tax agent comes with one expensive habit.

Buying books.

Audit books.
Tax books.
Accounting standards.
Company law.
Transfer pricing.
Business valuation.
Corporate advisory.

Over the years, I have accumulated quite a collection.

I keep them in our office library.

Open to all my colleagues.
Anyone can borrow.
Anyone can read.
Anyone can learn.

At least that was my original intention.

Then I read the news about Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

Apparently, Anthropic bought millions of physical books, removed their bindings, scanned the pages and converted them into digital files.

All this to help build its AI models.

Suddenly, I looked at my office library differently.

What if I scan my technical books and turn them into a private AI knowledge library?

Better still, organise the knowledge into Claude Skills for our Audit, Tax and Advisory teams.

Imagine.

My audit junior encounters a complicated accounting treatment.

Instead of searching through five thick books, he asks Claude.

My tax senior encounters an unusual tax issue.

Claude searches our authorised reference materials and points to the relevant discussion.

My advisory team needs a valuation methodology.

Claude helps locate the relevant technical guidance.

I have already paid for these books.
Now I am wondering whether I can make this investment more useful to my people.

But there is one big question.
The copyright to digitise and share it through AI in our firm.

Using RAG would usually be more suitable than embedding the entire book into AI skill. Still, the idea is tempting.

For more than 30 years, I have been collecting professional knowledge on bookshelves.

Maybe it is time to explore making that knowledge easier for my younger colleagues to access.

From books sitting on shelves to knowledge available when needed.

Now I am curious.