[PLUG] The end of libraries

Mike Cherba mcherba at gmail.com
Thu Nov 13 21:59:15 UTC 2014


Keith,
   I've had good luck with google scholar.  Very often there is a free
version of the paper posted on the author's website.  And google Scholar is
good about ferreting them out.  On the rare occasions when I can't track a
legal free copy of a paper down, I ask a friend who is in academe to obtain
the paper for me.

   That being said, I understand your worry about the ability of things to
get "lost"  conveniently.  But I tend to put my trust in projects like the
old Many Copies Keep Things Safe project.  I know of no researcher who
wants their hard work to disappear, and they all keep copies of the
original work.  If for nothing else, then for when they have to present or
are job hunting.
               -Mike


On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com>
wrote:

> I'm just back from a weekend conference and a few days in the
> San Jose / Palo Alto area, which I had intended to spend doing
> research in the Stanford libraries.  Stanford used to have the
> best physics/technical library on the West Coast.
>
> Perhaps they still do, if you are a student or professor, have
> access to their electronic books, and can do proper research with
> one screen at a time.  But their hard science book library is now
> only 8 rows of 24 feet of shelving, with 95% of their collection
> in offsite storage.  Stanford has "less on the floor" than Portland
> State University (or San Jose State, now the south bay leader).
>
> Journal articles are institutional subscription, or $35 per article
> for outsiders.  Portland State is the same deal, except many of the
> same journals are still on PSU shelves.
>
> In the quest for "convenience", universities are surrendering their
> freedom to the four big academic monopolies.  When paper versions
> disappear, you can bet that the monopolies will raise prices until
> the universities have to choose between academic staff and online
> access.  With the DMCA protecting publishers, who's to stop them?
>
> For now, Oregon Health Sciences University, Washington State, and
> the University of Washington still permit visitors access to their
> online collections, but this is expensive and could disappear.
> Worse, common-mode information system vulnerabilities at the big
> four could wipe out much of the academic corpus.  If the lights
> are blinking on a backup drive during a restore, is that actually
> a restore, or an erasure?
>
> Yes, electronic journals are convenient.  But copies should be
> widely distibuted:  purchase the content once, watermarked perhaps,
> and keep a copy on your local institutional hardware, forever.
>
> If the publishes insist on monopoly custody, or even monoculture
> software and hardware, then they should operate their monopolies
> subject to capital punishment (!) for executives and stockholders if
> they irretrievably lose civilization's crown jewels.  Those will be
> a fraction of the lives that will be lost if this vital information
> disappears.
>
> Aaron Schwartz died for our sins.  We're next.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com
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>



-- 
“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is
to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first
method is far more difficult.” ― C.A.R. Hoare
<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/266154.C_A_R_Hoare>



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