-----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org]On Behalf Of Michael Hart Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 9:31 AM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] PG audience On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Karen Lofstrom wrote:
The problem lieth not within PG. It lieth within Academia.
I must agree. Academia is perhaps the worst when it comes to the "not invented here," syndome. . .and it pays the price by lagging behind. Sometimes it's not a matter of laggig behind. Academia has different needs and goals than the casual reader. I'm an academic, and I will use PG with undergrands- but tell them to go to paper books for citations. Why? because provenance is important in citation. My students tend to think everything on the net is 'true'- they don't understand that books on the net may or may not reflect scholarly knowledge or acceptance. And often the divisions are too large for useful citation- the page is not only a piece of paper. It's a unit of citation. Page 193 in the 3rd edition of a particular book by a particular poublisher is page 193 in every copy, and contains a finite number of words. Chapter 23 may have a finite number of words, but how do I find the sentence I want to cite? Plus, the edition used on PG might not be the standard- it might be a variant. Variant problems are crucial when trying to read poetry and literature for scholarly purposes. Chefs aren't 'lagging behind' just because most of them still chop food by hand instead of using Cuisinarts. They can control the texture and shape of what they cook much better by using an old-fashioned blade. On the other hand, electric mixers are much more efficient for making cakes and can do a better job than a person beating eggs and butter by hand- which is why pastry chefs use machines most of the time.
If you don't want to cater to scholars, you're throwing away much of DP's work.
Its not our problem. Any amount of catering will not do away with
Academias
perceived "limitations" of electronic media.
That is, until they take over the eBooks, and claim them as their own. We probably won't, unless we can find ways of making exact facsimile scans of books with page numbers, citations, illustrations, and so on. Are musicians silly because they choose to play instruments instead of having machines do all the work? No. Machines, no matter how good they are, don't have the same warmth that physical instruments have. Even if one day they do, I doubt all the instuments in the world will be thrown away. Why do you care whether academics cite PG? You seem to think they should come to you- did you ever think we have this thing called a 'page' that acts as a standard unit of knowledge, and that when we cite something, we need that page to stay reasonably stable? And it does, even with the vagaries of publishing. PG is great but most of the the books you publish aren't the sorts of things that would be useful to a grad student anyway- or even an undergrad, most of the time. For people who want a book on the go, who are looking for an out of print book for nostalgia's sake, for people who need to change print size for readability, PG is perfect. But it's not very useful for citations, any more than tv science programs are. I do think that dedicated proofers can do a great deal, and should be applauded. They can have exactitude. But that's not the problem. The problem is provenance. If you wanted academics to accept you, you would have to provide that, and maybe have experts on particular books vet them.
If you don't want to cater to scholars, you're throwing away much of DP's work.
If we cater to scholars, we are only expanding the "digital divide," so to speak. Our goal is to provide a large viable library to all, not just to the scholars, who represent less than 1% of the people, and are often very elitist. I agree, and i'm a scholar. Stop worrying about what we think. PG has shown me books I couldn't enjoy otherwise. Scholars don't read scholarly books all the time, and they have places to go for that. The real value of the work lies in making it available to the masses, not to the scholars. If we can increase literacy by even 10%, we make more difference than if we cater to the scholars.
The best value for Academia (and the least work for us) would be just to include the page scans. Any transcription you make will fall short of the requirements of some scholar. I think we should use our time for producing more books for a general audience instead than producing Academia-certified editions of them.
Hear Hear! I agree- but I would love to see page scans. I don't think that most casual readers (and by that I even include 'serious' readers who do not use written material for citation) understand why pagination is so important to scholars. That's fine. But pease stop assuming that we're all Luddites just because PG is pretty much useless to us academically. Hey- professional baskeball players sometimes play one-on-one for fun; that doesn't mean they have to take such play seriously for it to have value. Michael _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d