OT Muir journal collection digitized

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 05:59:32 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 1, 11:24 am, Willi wrote:
When is everything at a library going to be digitized and available to
patrons online?

Everything? Never. See this excellent article (online! :-) by
Anthony Grafton from a recent New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...a_fact_grafton

(he also has an online-only selection of his favorite web resources
he

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007...neonly_grafton)

I usually shy away from words like "never" but even Google hasn't (and
probably won't) put a dent in digitizing the printed record, let alone
keep up with what is currently published (and "published"). Let alone
usefully make it available. (I do, however, think Google Books is a
pretty cool idea.)

How close do you think it'll come, including legal and extra-legal
scanning and "ebooking?" It would seem that between it all (Project
Gutenberg, the Carnegie Mellon thing, Athens, JSTOR, Knovel,
Thompson/Gale, ebookers, etc.) there is already a fair amount of books,
manuals, articles, etc., plus with libraries scanning their "papers"
collections, there is a growing pile of stuff in electronic form now.
I'd offer that the biggest problem might be creating a central catalog
to it all and figuring out how to add the extra-legal stuff, but ???

TC,
R

Our libraries in Colorado have made a bit of progress in this regard,
they have a good selection of audio books available (2000+ titles) for
download with a time limit and copy protection. I think is great. You
download the book and transfer it to a MP3 player (but not an IPOD) or
listen to it on your computer for a two week period.

DRM at work. They don't work on iPods because they use Windows DRM.
I've never actually used any of those from my public library because
the restrictions are just so foolish.

There are also some ebooks available, but they are very limited.
Personally, what I'd especially like to see are the online availability
of scientific journals.

Most are, including deep archives, but if you mean "online
availability of scientific journals from my living room" then the
answer is economics won't allow it, at least not now. Tim has pointed
out some of the issues. You should be able to access many online if
you darken the doorway of the library at Colorado State. We see
independent researchers at our place every day.

Bill

"Willi" wrote in message
...
wrote:
On Dec 1, 11:24 am, Willi wrote:

When is everything at a library going to be digitized and available to
patrons online?


Everything? Never. See this excellent article (online! :-) by
Anthony Grafton from a recent New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...a_fact_grafton

(he also has an online-only selection of his favorite web resources
he

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007...neonly_grafton)

I usually shy away from words like "never" but even Google hasn't (and
probably won't) put a dent in digitizing the printed record, let alone
keep up with what is currently published (and "published"). Let alone
usefully make it available. (I do, however, think Google Books is a
pretty cool idea.)

When I said "everything", I didn't mean EVERYTHING....

Right, not EVERYTHING, but there is already a stupefying quantity of free
stuff available. The trouble is cataloguing......finding what you're
interested in. There is no single comprehensive source of information on
what's available......or, none that I'm aware of, anyway. However, there
are a number of GOOD sources. Among the best I've found a

The Internet Public Library;

http://www.ipl.org/

The Online Books Page;

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

and The Internet Archive;

http://www.archive.org/index.php

All three of these will direct you to other sources. There are many of them
out there. I have links to 50 or 60 (most of which I rarely check because
of their limited scope) that I'll be happy to send to anyone interested, but
it's easy enough to search them (and countless others) out via Google.

Wolfgang

On Dec 2, 11:28 am, Willi wrote:
wrote:
Most are, including deep archives, but if you mean "online
availability of scientific journals from my living room" then the
answer is economics won't allow it, at least not now. Tim has pointed
out some of the issues. You should be able to access many online if
you darken the doorway of the library at Colorado State. We see
independent researchers at our place every day.

But why should I have to go there?

I would think that it costs more for a library to offer the physical
facilities and equipment to provide online access to the journals at the
library than it would to provide it for home use.

What am I missing here?

This is where the economics comes in.

Colorado State, as with all academic/research libraries spends a lot
of dollars (a LOT) to procure access to the online versions of
research journals. And to the indexing tools that provide researchers
the interface they need to find the bits from within these journals
that they need for their work. Most content providers have licensing
agreements that libraries sign when they purchase these collections
(or when they purchase the right to access these collections.) These
agreements- some more strict than others- usually allow access to the
content by university (or licensee) affiliated users. So to access
the content from home, users have to authenticate. So the CSU grad
student or professor who lives next door to you can access the good
stuff from his living room, while you (and I'm assuming you are not
CSU affiliated here) cannot.

Most (not all) agreements state that walk-in library users are allowed
to access content regardless of affiliation, which is why I mentioned
it to you as a possibility. And I'm primarily talking about
scientific content, since that is what I assume you are interested
in. The Knovels, IEEExplores, Nature, ACS, Elseviers out there (and
for non-sciences, JSTOR, Proquest, Gale, etc.) are dedicated to
providing online access to historic and current content, but they also
have a vested economic interest as well and I can tell you that big
dollars change hands!

Note that there are major public library systems that are providing
more and more access to this kind (online, remote access) of content
as well, akin to the e-books you've already noticed. I wouldn't hold
your breath for them to give you access to Nature any time soon
though :-)

I know that you are probably thinking "yes, but tax dollars go to the
NSF and the NIH which pays for the research, so I should have access
to the results" and/or "Colorado State is a public institution so I
should have access to the materials to which they subscribe" and I'll
nod and smile and won't be able to explain why the answer is, simply,
"sorry!"

Cheers!
Bill

On Dec 2, 11:04 am, Willi wrote:
wrote:

DRM at work. They don't work on iPods because they use Windows DRM.
I've never actually used any of those from my public library because
the restrictions are just so foolish.

(I understand DRM. My comment was a just dig at IPODS, and Microsoft)
Maybe the specific protection scheme is cumbersome, but I don't
understand why you think it is foolish. It is a system for information
that is covered by copywrite. You don't own the information you
download, you just "borrow" it, like you do now when you check out a
book at a library.

(Copyright)

Foolish was a hasty choice of adjective. I like your "cumbersome"
much better, and in my case also a dig at Microsoft, and as a Windows
resistant Mac user, I bristle when I see content that is labeled
"Windows only." Yeh, I know I can run Windows on my MacBook, I just
don't want to.

Bill

On Dec 3, 9:11 am, wrote:
On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 05:59:32 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 1, 11:24 am, Willi wrote:
When is everything at a library going to be digitized and available to
patrons online?

Everything? Never. See this excellent article (online! :-) by
Anthony Grafton from a recent New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...a_fact_grafton

(he also has an online-only selection of his favorite web resources
he

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007...neonly_grafton)

I usually shy away from words like "never" but even Google hasn't (and
probably won't) put a dent in digitizing the printed record, let alone
keep up with what is currently published (and "published"). Let alone
usefully make it available. (I do, however, think Google Books is a
pretty cool idea.)

How close do you think it'll come, including legal and extra-legal
scanning and "ebooking?" It would seem that between it all (Project
Gutenberg, the Carnegie Mellon thing, Athens, JSTOR, Knovel,
Thompson/Gale, ebookers, etc.) there is already a fair amount of books,
manuals, articles, etc., plus with libraries scanning their "papers"
collections, there is a growing pile of stuff in electronic form now.
I'd offer that the biggest problem might be creating a central catalog
to it all and figuring out how to add the extra-legal stuff, but ???

This is where it gets tricky, and I'll point you again to the Grafton
article. He says it way more eloquently than I can. In particular,
if you start looking at the notion of a universal library of
EVERYTHING, things get dicey. Grafton points out that the U.S.
National Archives alone has approximately 9 billion items. That's a
lot of scanning. Or that in the Google Library project, they are
scanning 1 million books from the NYPL- that is a drop in the
proverbial bucket compared to the NYPL's total holdings. And as you
hint at, the problem isn't just the scanning- consider the work that
goes into creating a useful, searchable collection of materials.

Have a peek, for example, at the nice work the UOP library folks did
on that Muir collection- each page is indexed and tagged. That takes
some time, and expertise! And sure, its easy to say "well, of course
you'd take the time and effort for Muir" but who draws the line on
what is important and what is not? Perhaps one day Settlesworth's
morning notes to his employer will be deemed equally important!

I'll also point out that of the providers you mention above, at least
three of them are subscription-based.

How close to "everything" will we get? Hard to say. But I hope that
despite the embarrassment of riches provided by the likes of Google
Books and so on (and quite seriously, the amount of information- and
maybe even knowledge!- that is available freely to those with online
access is MUCH larger now than it ever has been), that folks don't
think "I'm searching EVERYTHING!" Because they aren't. Not that
being exhaustive is always the goal, but still...

Bill
(see, I told you, push the right button and I can go on, and on, and
on.... :-)

"Opus--Mark H. Bowen" wrote in message
...

I saw a PBS "Antiques Roadshow" the other week where a woman had a
slew--400 or more-- of "English" langauge Japanese propaganda posters.
The roadshow guy estimated them in the thousands of dollars, even though
he had never seen anything like them before--IIRCC.
Op

I'm not amazed at the popularity of antiques.
In the early 90's my mom wanted a garage sale before they moved.
I guess they needed to lighten their load, sort of clean house. It was our
very first garage sale, so a few days before I advertised in the local
newspaper as 1st garage sale in 50 years. I also listed a few items, many
from the Japanese Interment Camp. Gave the address and the starting time of
9:00am that Saturday morning.

As it turned out, we had people knocking on our door before Saturday wanting
to view items we had. I finally had to put a note on our front door that the
sale will start 9am on Saturday, please do not bother us before then. That
morning, we had people camped out on our lawn at 5am. My Dad got up around
8am and said; "What the Hell's going on out there?" By then it looked like
we were throwing a rock concert. I guess one of the neighbors who didn't
know what was happening, called the police, and a good thing as the police
had to take control of the crowd.

I asked, "Hey Dad, is this what camp life was like?"
He just shook his head and said; "Don't sell any of my fishing gear!"
-tom

On Dec 2, 11:04 am, Willi wrote:
wrote:

DRM at work. They don't work on iPods because they use Windows DRM.
I've never actually used any of those from my public library because
the restrictions are just so foolish.

(I understand DRM. My comment was a just dig at IPODS, and Microsoft)
Maybe the specific protection scheme is cumbersome, but I don't
understand why you think it is foolish. It is a system for information
that is covered by copywrite. You don't own the information you
download, you just "borrow" it, like you do now when you check out a
book at a library.

OK, I thought of an analogy. You rightly point out that you are
borrowing the e-book (or audiobook) when you download it, and that,
not unlike borrowing a book, you should not expect to keep the copy
indefinitely. However, when you check out a print book, do they only
check it out to you if you meet certain restrictions? Does the book
disappear if you keep it longer than x-number of weeks? Do they first
make sure you don't own a photocopier or scanner? This is what I was
thinking about when I used the term "foolish". And I think that
rather than fight these restrictions, libraries have given in to the
publishers who insist on the restrictions so that they (the library)
can provide a service- it may not be a perfect service, but it is a
service, one in which both the client and the vendor are getting
something.

I figure it's resistance from authors, publishers etc that keeps this
from happening. The music industry, with alot of kicking and screaming,
has made/is making this transition. IMO, this change has expanded the
variety of music available instead of relying on "the industry" to pick,
not the best music, but the music they feel will make them the most
money. I think it's a logical step for the "printed" word. The only
reason that this change hasn't been "forced" by the public (like it was
with music) is that there isn't YET a way to read these digitized words
that is as easy and satisfying as using printed media.

It will be interesting to see if anyone (eg. the new Kindle) can
breathe life into the e-book reader concept. That market has
floundered for as many years as it has been extant. Although I *do*
know a few people who actually prefer to read on a screen (and in
these cases [three people] the screen is a PDA.) Of course, here we
are talking about books that one would read, not reference materials
or short articles, etc.

I like how you used the word "satisfying". There is something
satisfying about the book as an item, and reading a book as a process,
is there not? However, I would wager that a very large percentage of
the books I have read over the past several years (and an even higher
percentage of articles), I "discovered" by some digital means (reviews
found and read online, through personal contacts made online, etc.)
Even Wolfgang's "Forgotten Treasures" I usually end up digging out the
original, rather than reading on the screen (or printing out.) We are
lucky, no?

Bill

wrote in message
...

...its easy to say "well, of course
you'd take the time and effort for Muir"....

Um......who dat?

Most people, or so it seems to me anyway, on hearing a faint bell ringing,
will either shake their heads until it goes away or turn up the volume to
drown it out. Here in southern Curdistan the name "Muir" crops up all over
the landscape.....not so surprisingly. References to eponymy (I've tried
this on the John Muir trail in the Kettle Moraine State forest about thirty
miles west of here) usually elicit blank stares.

You'd be amazed how easy it is to lead folks into a discussion of the role
played by Frank and Lloyd Wright in the development of heavier than air
flight.

Wolfgang
but then, references to eponymy, regardless of context, generally result in
something ranging from blank stares to outright belligerence.

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 06:34:55 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 2, 11:28 am, Willi wrote:
wrote:
Most are, including deep archives, but if you mean "online
availability of scientific journals from my living room" then the
answer is economics won't allow it, at least not now. Tim has pointed
out some of the issues. You should be able to access many online if
you darken the doorway of the library at Colorado State. We see
independent researchers at our place every day.

But why should I have to go there?

I would think that it costs more for a library to offer the physical
facilities and equipment to provide online access to the journals at the
library than it would to provide it for home use.

What am I missing here?

This is where the economics comes in.

Colorado State, as with all academic/research libraries spends a lot
of dollars (a LOT) to procure access to the online versions of
research journals. And to the indexing tools that provide researchers
the interface they need to find the bits from within these journals
that they need for their work. Most content providers have licensing
agreements that libraries sign when they purchase these collections
(or when they purchase the right to access these collections.) These
agreements- some more strict than others- usually allow access to the
content by university (or licensee) affiliated users. So to access
the content from home, users have to authenticate. So the CSU grad
student or professor who lives next door to you can access the good
stuff from his living room, while you (and I'm assuming you are not
CSU affiliated here) cannot.

Most (not all) agreements state that walk-in library users are allowed
to access content regardless of affiliation, which is why I mentioned
it to you as a possibility. And I'm primarily talking about
scientific content, since that is what I assume you are interested
in. The Knovels, IEEExplores, Nature, ACS, Elseviers out there (and
for non-sciences, JSTOR, Proquest, Gale, etc.) are dedicated to
providing online access to historic and current content, but they also
have a vested economic interest as well and I can tell you that big
dollars change hands!

Note that there are major public library systems that are providing
more and more access to this kind (online, remote access) of content
as well, akin to the e-books you've already noticed. I wouldn't hold
your breath for them to give you access to Nature any time soon
though :-)

I know that you are probably thinking "yes, but tax dollars go to the
NSF and the NIH which pays for the research, so I should have access
to the results" and/or "Colorado State is a public institution so I
should have access to the materials to which they subscribe" and I'll
nod and smile and won't be able to explain why the answer is, simply,
"sorry!"

Cheers!
Bill


And I haven't seen mention of the economics of scale and the "HOLY
****!" method of pricing (where the price is set ridiculously high and
is lowered a fraction at a time until buyers quit saying "HOLY....") in
"academic" materials.

Granted, the economics of scale argument is somewhat legit - if a
publisher knows that there is a finite and small market for such things
as a full-color-plated masterwork on the reproductive system of the
lower eastern Poontang Creek partially-blind snaildarting spotted owl
(there's supposedly 12 of them in the wild, and that's roughly twice the
number of folks who are interested in spending $597.45USD on Dr.
Pencilneck's treatise on them), then they've got to charge a rather
larger amount per copy than Tom Clancy's latest schlock. Then there is
the whole issue of library sales and what they pay.

OTOH, I know that much of the what is charged for such stuff is at least
partially due to the greatly over-inflated "monetary value" many
academics place on this stuff, and publishers are only happy to oblige
helping them rape each other of tax and "advancement" dollars, for the
standard vig, of course. I mean, in a real business model, most of the
"academic" papers would be on the on special offer, slow-moving stock
clearance area. This is not to say they aren't contextually-valuable to
a _VERY_ limited number of people, but in the new, electronic real
world, that dog won't hunt and until the folks that price this stuff
realizes that it's a lot better to sell 100 e-copies of a 30-page
article a year at $.50 then it is to sell 2 copies a millennium for $19,
the shocking prices carried over from print academia are likely to
continue.

TC,
R

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 06:34:55 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 2, 11:28 am, Willi wrote:
wrote:
Most are, including deep archives, but if you mean "online
availability of scientific journals from my living room" then the
answer is economics won't allow it, at least not now. Tim has pointed
out some of the issues. You should be able to access many online if
you darken the doorway of the library at Colorado State. We see
independent researchers at our place every day.

But why should I have to go there?

I would think that it costs more for a library to offer the physical
facilities and equipment to provide online access to the journals at the
library than it would to provide it for home use.

What am I missing here?

This is where the economics comes in.

Colorado State, as with all academic/research libraries spends a lot
of dollars (a LOT) to procure access to the online versions of
research journals. And to the indexing tools that provide researchers
the interface they need to find the bits from within these journals
that they need for their work. Most content providers have licensing
agreements that libraries sign when they purchase these collections
(or when they purchase the right to access these collections.) These
agreements- some more strict than others- usually allow access to the
content by university (or licensee) affiliated users. So to access
the content from home, users have to authenticate. So the CSU grad
student or professor who lives next door to you can access the good
stuff from his living room, while you (and I'm assuming you are not
CSU affiliated here) cannot.

Most (not all) agreements state that walk-in library users are allowed
to access content regardless of affiliation, which is why I mentioned
it to you as a possibility. And I'm primarily talking about
scientific content, since that is what I assume you are interested
in. The Knovels, IEEExplores, Nature, ACS, Elseviers out there (and
for non-sciences, JSTOR, Proquest, Gale, etc.) are dedicated to
providing online access to historic and current content, but they also
have a vested economic interest as well and I can tell you that big
dollars change hands!

Note that there are major public library systems that are providing
more and more access to this kind (online, remote access) of content
as well, akin to the e-books you've already noticed. I wouldn't hold
your breath for them to give you access to Nature any time soon
though :-)

I know that you are probably thinking "yes, but tax dollars go to the
NSF and the NIH which pays for the research, so I should have access
to the results" and/or "Colorado State is a public institution so I
should have access to the materials to which they subscribe" and I'll
nod and smile and won't be able to explain why the answer is, simply,
"sorry!"

Cheers!
Bill


And I haven't seen mention of the economics of scale and the "HOLY
****!" method of pricing (where the price is set ridiculously high and
is lowered a fraction at a time until buyers quit saying "HOLY....") in
"academic" materials.

Granted, the economics of scale argument is somewhat legit - if a
publisher knows that there is a finite and small market for such things
as a full-color-plated masterwork on the reproductive system of the
lower eastern Poontang Creek partially-blind snaildarting spotted owl
(there's supposedly 12 of them in the wild, and that's roughly twice the
number of folks who are interested in spending $597.45USD on Dr.
Pencilneck's treatise on them), then they've got to charge a rather
larger amount per copy than Tom Clancy's latest schlock. Then there is
the whole issue of library sales and what they pay.

OTOH, I know that much of the what is charged for such stuff is at least
partially due to the greatly over-inflated "monetary value" many
academics place on this stuff, and publishers are only happy to oblige
helping them rape each other of tax and "advancement" dollars, for the
standard vig, of course. I mean, in a real business model, most of the
"academic" papers would be on the on special offer, slow-moving stock
clearance area. This is not to say they aren't contextually-valuable to
a _VERY_ limited number of people, but in the new, electronic real
world, that dog won't hunt and until the folks that price this stuff
realizes that it's a lot better to sell 100 e-copies of a 30-page
article a year at $.50 then it is to sell 2 copies a millennium for $19,
the shocking prices carried over from print academia are likely to
continue.

Uh huh. I see. O.k., now explain why it is that when the price of oil
skyrocketed up to about $50 a barrel I paid a measly $3.59 for a gallon of
gas, and recently, when the price of oil plummeted to a pitiful $100 per
barrel, I was raped to the tune of $2.83 for the gas.

Wolfgang
who just LOVES these little exercises in the intricacies of real-ekonomiks!