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SciFi Motherlode Donated to Canadian University
Freshly Exhumed writes: "SciFan aficionados might soon be lining up to study at the University of Calgary due to an
amazing donation: A massive collection of science fiction and pulp magazines spanning the last century has been donated to the University of Calgary which officials say will be a boon for literary and pop culture research. William Gibson had spent many of his 92 years sealing his prized collection in plastic, leaving behind a true motherlode of science fiction writings."
so um.... they're gonna scan/digitize it all, right? having a hard copy is nice and all, but i'd rather see all of these volumes of sci fi gone to the knife, and scanned in, at say, 600 dpi, and then OCR'd.
from what it sounds like in the article, they're going to catolouge this and stick it on a shelf for people to read... like the article mentions, pulp fiction sci fi was meant to be thrown away...those books will only last a few precious years of handling before they're lost forever.
i've seen a few book digitizing devices, but i've never seen them in wide use at libraries....does the library of congress digitize their library? is there anyway to access/query it? a book only lasts forever, as does a digital copy and the means to read the digital copy, but an obscure dusty book on a dusty shelf out of reach halfway across the country from me isn't going to help me much on my college thesis (or 10,000 other people who might need to access exerpts of the book for some reason or another)
moox. for a new generation.
Well, you can take a look at how trends in society have affected literature. I remember picking up a copy of The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle and finding that this newer edition had totally removed all references to the word "negro", since the original text might offend some younger readers (the Gutenberg linked above has the original, I think.)
I recently read a book by Ben Bova (The Watchmen), a re-release of a pair of novels originally written in the 60's, where he specifically says in the 1994 foreword that he did NOT alter the original text, and hence you would find women referred to generically as "girls".
A similar donation was made in 1970 by Judith Merril to the Toronto Public Library. It's a reference library so they don't lend books(bastards).
A contemporary of Asimov, Leiber, Pohl and others she donated around 5000 items. The collection is now about 57000 items; Novels, Anthologies, Essays and more. What's really neat about the whole thing is that it's housed in a standard Toronto public library and anyone can use their services.
anyway...
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Be forewarned, these are part of a special collection on "Human Sexuality" and can't be checked out the library. I don't think you can even browse the collection without requesting permission, but it's nice to know there's a larger collection of porn in comparison to what's under your bed.
-Mr. Fusion
Hopefully American libraries are better in preserving modern pop culture magazines and comics than European counterparts where they are considered semi-interesting, un-cultural, crap.
I once searched for old issues of a pop [yes, music] magazine only to be told there are no copies left in any of the national libraries. All had been stolen. And, the ones I received were torn and had centerfold posters missing, etc.
Hopefully, Los Americanos can preserve the Donald Duck mentality present in the Western world post-WWII era bewtter than the hopelessly traditional/conventional institutions in Europe like The Vatican, Louvre, etc.
For the most part, the copywrite is owned by the author for his lifespan plus another 70 years after his death. This guarantees that his heirs will also benefit from his work. After that period, the copywrited work is considered public domain.
/.-ers who are fans of science fiction (bet that's most of us), I'd urge you all to make some sort of contribution to continue the preservation of all this hard work. I certainly intend to!
If the work was created as work-for-hire (in other words, a publisher/corporation paid the writer to write that piece) then the copywrite can last for a duration of up to 120 years from the publish date.
So a work-for-hire piece will become public domain sooner than a freelanced piece. Knowing that one's children will benefit from one's hard work and creativity is certainly an incentive to try and create something for the public to enjoy. The more they enjoy it, the more income your family will receive.
I have a lot of old sci-fi paperbacks that I've collected over the past 30 years. Not that I was collecting them, but I was reading them and then sticking them on my bookshelves. Most of the older ones crumble now when I pull them out to read them. So I'm all for digitizing this collection to preserve it! Using proper storage techniques, yes these paper goods can last for centuries. Thank heavens that Mr. Gibson made some effert to do this! But with today's technology, digitizing would be a more permanent solution.
I would recommend digitizing at 4000 dpi (optical) to maximize the image quality. 600 dpi would not be adequate for high end printing, should some publisher wish to print some of the collection. I would think that on a university, there would be enough students who are deep afficianados of science fiction who would be quite dedicated to working towards copying this collection with great care.
Yes, magnetic media fades, but optical media does not. Well, so long as you don't scratch the disk...
All of the works with a publishing date prior to 1923 could be immediately posted to the internet for access. Works after 1923, permission would be needed from the copywrite holders to be posted digitally, depending on the state of the copywrite. Chances are, with a lot of the older works, permission could be had fairly easily. There are times when the children of the artist are sufficiently well off that they don't need the income, or they would like to see their parent's name become known again, and release some or all of the works to public domain.
Last, I'd like to point out the shear volume of work and dedication that Mr. Gibson had put into his collection! Finding periodicals that have gone out of print (comic books and the like) is NOT easy! In the article, the brief mention of the traveling Mr. Gibson did should give one an idea of what was involved with this. On top of that, he loved the genre enough to preserve it as best he could. Condsider how we are going to benefit from his work! A nod should also go to his son, Andrew Gibson for making the donation. Just as his father preserved the hard work of many writers and artists, Andrew Gibson has preserved the hard work of his father.
To the both of you, I'd like to say thank you. To my fellow
Whew! This water sure is cold!
But who IS this other, older and yet sci-fi loving William Gibson???
I for one am not ready to count out the idea that time travel was involved and that this is the cyberpunk author William Gibson. I think that the age of some of the pieces in the collection supports that theory as well.
As we all know, the sci-fi writers of the 20th century are, in the future, remembered as pre-cogs, and for that reason, they are sometimes retrieved by time dredge by interested parties in the distant future. Phil Dick tells us that this happened on one occasion to Poul Andersen. It seems conceivable that this happened to Gibson, but he was returned to a different time, either accidentally or for some purpose -- perhaps to amass this very sci-fi collection.
But why ??? What forces are at work here ?
I've been helping to research science fiction terms like 'little green men' for the OED, and I can only gasp and drool and wait for UCalgary's army of cataloging librarians to make the collection accessible to the public.
This will be a great source of information on how and when science fiction words came into use in English, and if I had a sabbatical-type job, I'd have just found what I wanted to do with my next sabbatical.
We still need help, by the way, so please help the Oxford English Dictionary learn more about science fiction and fandom.