Slashdot Mirror
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."
Shit, that dude's aged well.
Cynicism is the natural defence of the romantic.
turtle turtle!!!
...when he died, I assume this was the other William Gibson.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Some of this stuff will find its way to ibiblio or some other online archive..
According to the article, library officials estimated that $250,000 (in Canadian dollars, I'm assuming) would be needed to clean and restore the material. I think this would be a worthy project to contribute to, especially with the favorable exchange rate.
I've been looking over the UCalagary library site but I couldn't find any explicit donation mechanism. Anyone know who to contact to donate funds to preserve this material?
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.
Imagine if this was a porn collection.
Probably not, since most things published after 1922 aren't in the public domain, and very little science fiction is that old.
4Literature - Read, write, and discuss your favor
Oohh.. Just books and magazines.. gotcha.
=-Jippy
I wonder what material can NOT be used to study the role of women in society and whether the studies already cover enough. Odd that this is what the interviewed professor first thought about. Well, it must be utterly interesting ;)
if by "preserve" they mean "digitize" for public consumption, then count me in
moox. for a new generation.
- Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
- Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
- Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
The "troll" moderation reason is fragmented and broken, why? Because they are trying to use an obsolete usenet term on a realtime discussion, "trolls" can cover a huge blanket of ideas.- Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
- Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
- Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
Subnet banning, this bans a user unless they email jamie macarthy with their mp5ed ipids. This is unfair, and banning a subnet BLOCKS A WHOLE ISP SOMETIMES, and not that individual user! This can cause chaos! But real trolls use annoymous proxys to get around this so THIS JUST BANS LEGITMATE USERS! Also, they are trying to censor some anoymous proxies, mainly from countrys like africa, so this yet more DISCRIMINATION! If you try and post before the ban is over it gets extended. Pink page of Death, This censors people who use legitmate proxys or firewalls. It also blocks serivces like CgiProxy and filters like t'inator. The Bitchslap! An unethical punishment which is applied to moderators who fight censorship against this site! In addition the Editors use their un-limited mod points to create a communist style censored discussion on slashdot! This one sided discussion makes trolls more determined But, the issue that concerens us the most, is the COMMENT QUOTA. A discrimatory system that stiffles discussion, cripples the community and will ultimateley destroy slashdot unless it is removed! Annoymous cowards are allowed only 10 posts a day! This is unethical! Users with negative karma only get two! That is DISCRIMINATION! How would you like to only be able to speak once a day, just because of the color of your skin. That would be racism, and slashdot is discrimitating on people just because of a negative number in a database! BOYCOTT SLASHDOT! LET THEM DIE! We wan't these stupid useless restrictions REMOVED! This comment will be posted again and again until it does! Inportant imformation for users Boycott slashdot, they are pissing over their community, they are becoming like the RIAA and MICROSOFT! Do NOT TOLERATE THIS SHIT! Here are some real news for nerds sites. We don't need slashdot, slashdot deserves to die! MSNBC BBC NEWS News.com Linux online Linux daily news network Weird news from dailyrotten.com Trollaxor, news for trolls, they are real people too! CNN.com New york times (free registration required) LINUX.com News forge K5 Mandrake forum Toms hardware The register Kde dot news The linux kernel Archives Adequecy Xfree86.org There are hundreds more, But this is where slashdot STEALS THE MAJORITY OF its "news" from. Proxy sites Anti proxy Jmarshalls Cgiproxy,which has been pink paged! Infamous Trolls Wipo Troll Klerck Punish them, here are their emails, spam them, flame them goatse them! Rob malda Jamie Macarthy ChrisD Hemos Micheal Pudge The others ones apperantly dont have an e-mail, probably because ROB MALDA IS PRETENDING HE IS JOHN KATZ. Thank you for reading this, please feel free to repost this information, please reply to add your comments, fight slashdot and its CENSORSHIP Don't forget to sign the petition!They have a page on donations here, nothing specific about the library but I'm sure you could specify that a donation is for the library.
18+-2th post!
Who's responsible for preserving information if the copyright holder doesn't do it? There's a lot of material generated over the past century that's turning to dust, or has been shoveled into landfills (many MGM props/old negatives were THROWN AWAY by the studio in the 70's to save space...)
With this mania about preventing copies, I can see a day when NOBODY can benefit from when copyright expires on an item, because it's long mouldered away, neglected by it's owner, and locked away from those who would have preserved it. Really, copyright should be shortened to a reasonable period, or else compulsory licensing to libraries and archives should be part of the deal, in order to ensure that the stuff the copyright owner makes money off of today can be enjoyed by the public tommorrow.
After all, the intent of copyright was to ensure the public had access to creative works, but making sure the creator had an incentive (ie, they got paid) to release their work and profit by it. But the key intent is to make sure that the work is acessible to all, so that the public as a whole can benefit. After all, that's why we have libraries, so that the society as a whole can be enriched.
Unfortunately, there are some who believe the exact opposite, that money should come before the public good... and they can afford to hire politicians to write laws that enforce that belief, and the lawyers to make it stick. The irony here is that corporations too were created for the public good.
And it doesn't look like any concrete reform is going to come out of Enron and Worldcom. We really need to address the issue of corporations divorcing themselves from the rest of society, and acting as if they're above the law. Perhaps we need to go back to chartering corporations with specific aims that can benefit the public, by power of the state legislatures again?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
I've been looking forward to the first book of his 'noughties trilogy'. As well as the slow progression (but certainly inevitable!) of Neuromancer and the Zen Differential, based on Count Zero, to the silver screen.
A big sigh of relief, and what a big boon to our understanding of the past's view of the future, it's now when hindsight truly makes the hopes and fears of past people known.
they made me do it
Fuck I'm angry tonight.
especially with the favorable exchange rate
:)
Thats right! they will be running a fund drive special i heard!
For every US $100 you give to them they will send you one canuck to be your personal bitch for a year!
For every US $1000 you give to them they will send you one FEMALE canuck instead..
Damn gotta love these exchange rates between the US & 3rd world countries
The equipment to read digital copies doesn't last for centuries, not even for decades.
Ask those people who had to pay a tonne of money to have their old Wordstar CP/M disks transferred to MS word.
In a century or more most of what we produced digitally will be gone forever.
Err, women are still often referred to as "girls". Just look at the "Spice Girls" with their "girl power". Now "broads" and "dames", that are antiquated ways of referring to women.
Of course the '90s gave us an even more offensive term for women which you hear in nearly every rap single: "bitches".
I hope they scan them all and put up a web-library.
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.
slashdot is only good when you have been up for like 36 hours and you are getting really sleeeepy then all the posts seem really funny.
otherwise slashdot is shiat. But next time you are exhuasted stop to read a few comments, it's funny ass hell.
"This new version of adobe acrobat must be a plot by zee evil americans to poison my precious bodily fluids with riboflavin overdose!"
"Miznacr0shitsnack sux0rz a kaXz0rz!"
"richard stallman has declared that using a GNU/abacus promotes freedom so burn your computers for they are tainted with unholy unfree sins of capitalism!"
"Grip-off and Kimitation have just released new versions! oh yes thank you so much you medoicre C coders are my gods! let me blow you at once!"
well something like that...you know the usual crap, except when you are so very sleepy it all seems so very amusing.
heh heh hehehe heheh HYAHAHHAHAHA.
Thank YOU mr. Slashdot Moderator.
*Mr. Slashdot Moderator* (in macho voice from beer commercial)
You keep the goatsex guy at -1.
You mod up misinformation.
You call honest opinions trolls.
You make this country great, so i salute YOU mr. Slashdot Moderator!
*Mr. Slashdot Moderator* (in macho voice from beer commercial)
No Amazing Fantasy #15 :(
Am I the only person disturbed by the fact that Gibson was born in 1948, SFFWorld Another Another etc. ?
Also, there is no mention that William Gibson died.
Either, this is another canadian sci-fi enthusiast, with the same name as the William Gibson that wrote Neuromancer, or, Someone's trying to pull a fast one.
fnord.
With a Red Hat pulled down low 'gainst the wind,
Renegade battling the postmodern mind,
Rebel on the run, tipped my hat and grinned,
I'd saved those things their pride had left behind.
WHY ARE THE EDITORS POSTING THESE SHIT ARTICLES?!?! I WANT TO READ NEWS ABOUT LINUX!
So that I won't be accused of complaining without doing anything to improve Slashdot, here's a Linux poem as my contribution:
I'd seen poets drown in bureaucracy,
Know ye the free spirit's safer at sea.
I dreamed of a tall ship with stalwart sailors,
With a cause higher than the bottom line,
And left behind the consultant bailers,
To sail aboard a linux ship so fine.
With a Pentium hull, the Western Canon,
Oak planks of reason riveted with rhyme,
To serve the Great Books forever and anon,
Designed to voyage across all of time.
I wonder if this collector had any particular interest in cyberpunk? William Gibson owning a massive collection of Science Fiction publications. What an irony if it didn't include one of the pioneers of a significant genre of SF - the cyberpunk worlds of William Gibson.
your uncle is gay.
Does anyone other than me see that MS .net add on this page? This is the first time I have seen a M$ add on slashdot. Does anyone know if it happened before this? I wonder if they know the amount of hate that exists on slashdot that is aimed at them.
First, you have to know, not fear, know that someday you are going to die
totally valid points made.
$250,000? No, $500K Canadian.
From the article:
"The university estimates $500,000 is needed to clean, preserve and catalogue the books and magazines. It hopes public donations will cover that cost."
it's big.
This is the beginning of a real-life re-enactment of Farenheit 451.
screw u asshole! we're quite a bit smarter than your average american stooge!
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.
Look you uneducated pos.
You dont have to knock Canada just because our dicks are bigger. Im sick of all you retarded americans thinking canada is 3rd wolrd. We aren't. It seems that whenever anything news worthy has canada in the headlines someone has to post this garbage. Too bad metamoderation doesnt allow us to create a 3d arm coming outta your monitor to bitchslap you accross the face. (I guess there is a need for some technical innovation in visual FORCE feedback here.)
BTW, most canadians are happy stealing amercan's money anyway.
It may be off topic, but Forrest J. Ackerman's marvellous collection of books, artwork, and movie memorabilia is currently being auctioned to bits on Ebay.
Apparently Forrey needs some cash to retire. Sure would be nice if a benefactor could step in and preserve the collection intact. Visit the Ackermansion here.
... just so i can be closer to this incredible collection. i'm an avid reader of many genres, but i do admit to enjoying sci-fi more than most. i wonder if i can convince anyone here that i need a sabbatical for, oh say, three or four years to explore the impact of sci-fi literature on the dawn of the 21st century. the amazing stories archive alone will take a couple of months ... what the hell, i'm going to try!
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
it's funny how you tell him that he's uneducated, yet all you said in your favor was that your "dicks are bigger", calling Americans retarded, and talk of "stealing american's money".
hmm..you may be Canadian, but Margaret Atwood you're not, eh?
--- What
Don't you think you should mention he wasn't William Gibson ?
... :-)
The article could be about a japanese brain surgeon.
Half of us would go "What? The father of cyberpunk got a new job in Japan? Cool
Doh!" anyway...
No sig to see here. Move along.
Up here at the University of New Brunswick one of our libraries (www.lib.unb.ca) has a pretty big collection of sci-fi already. It also has a ton of beat lit. -- apparently, both collections are due to the efforts of one English prof in particular who uses the stuff in his classes, but I don't know what kind of pressure he had to exert to get our library admin to buy "non-academic" ... of course, the library in question is at the satellite campus an hour and a half away :(
Don't put salt in your eyes.
Its not like Im using it....
Its like my body has developed a HUGE sci-fi deficiency
I've looked at your photography, may I suggest a new sig:
www.evolutionarydeadend.com simply the best photography by a crack-addled monkey around
All the rights, and bugger all of the responsibilities... the day that corporations became above the law passed a long long time ago....
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
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!
You're smarter than an American stooge? That isn't saying much.
Heck, he didn't even claim to be smarter than an above average stooge. Just an average stooge.
I think he might be agreeing with the parent.
What is that in real currency?
"William Gibson had spent many of his 92 years sealing his prized collection in plastic" Wow! Now THATS dedication!
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
% Suddenly, the Comic Book Guy crashes through the skylight on the ... the Collector.
... remove ... my ... breastplate!
% type of electromagnet you might see suspended from a crane. He is
% dressed as
Collector: Behold, I am the Collector, and I have come to add
you to my collection.
[turns on a magnet, which attracts Lucy's
breastplate. She sails up to the magnet, where she
is trapped]
Lawless: Must
[unties the straps holding it on. Below, everyone
in the audience produces a camera]
Maybe later. [reties straps]
-- "Treehouse of Horror X"
From BABF01
M@
Krispy Cream is people
At 35,000 volumes, that donation certainly makes the Calgary collection larger than the MIT Science Fiction Society's collection. The MITSFS Collection has approximately 25,000 volumes, and is growing. I guess when the Gibson Donation is processed and shelved, it would take away the MITSFS's status as the world's largest open-shelved science fiction collection.
The size of the Gibson Donation is quite astonishing. The MITSFS Collection supposedly has 90% of all english-language science fiction ever published, and we have deals with the publishing companies to get a copy of every new SF book that comes out - often before the bookstores get them. I guess the Calgary donation has a lot of stuff that we totally overlooked (the Saturday Evening Post stuff), or else a lot of foreign language stuff (MITSFS isn't so strong on Japanese science fiction manga, for instance). If anybody is ever up in Cambridge, check the opening times, and stop by.
Patiwat Panurach
patiwat@sloan.mit.edu
It would be wonderful if all of the out-of-print items could be scanned and ORDed as they are catalogued, and make available to the public that way, perhaps put online at some point.I don't know what Canadian copyright laws are like, but hopefully they haven't been hit with a Mickey-Mouse-Protection act like America's leaders sold us out with.
I heard the same on the news - that it will take a year to catalog the collection alone.
They really do need the cash. The UofC library has had a catalogin backlog of 1-2 years for new titles, meaning that books don't get into the system as fast.
U of Calgary has a great press release @
http://www.fp.ucalgary.ca/unicomm/news/gibson/
with photos of the collection and more. it's really cool, actually.
~ kjrose
Its nice to see someone so generous. I had no reason to go to calgary but now.... Calgary I'm coming!
louis
The movie Hackers :
Oh no ! Somebody hack the Gibson !
-Linux is SO fast it does an infinite loop in 5 seconds.
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.
The much maligned librarian profession have been doing this for many years and are *very* good at it.
:)
Just out of curiosity, who's maligning librarians? This is the first I've heard of it
Unfortunately, the rest of the library is pretty much useless as they haven'y bought a new book in 5 years and have cancelled many of their journal subscriptions (we now "share" with other Canadian Universities). They seem to have spent all their money on iMacs and other IT stuff.
Interestingly, I did take a sci-fi english course as one of my non-technical electives. I wonder if they'll acquire a top person in that field now.
Donations like this really make me worry about the coming of the e-book. With e-books there is no ability to give your long horded collection to posterity after death. In fact of the few e-books I have purchased over time I have lost the keys to two of them rendering them inaccessible.
My chief worry is that once a work becomes economically uninteresting to a major publisher it will vanish from the public's ability to read it. True there may be a copy stored in an ill backed up database in a dark room under the stairs but this does little to enhance our culture or enrich the lifes of the average reader unwilling to brave the, "beware of the leopard", signs.
Perhaps we need to resurrect the idea of key escrow only this time implementing it for the citizen's benefit. Perhaps as a condition of selling a copyrighted work the publisher should be forced to deposit the work, along with any appropriate keys with an escrow agency. As copyrights lapse the agency would release the works to the public via a website or whatever miraculous technology replaces the web.
If the government is going to be involved in the guardianship of corporate profits via DMCA etc I would like to see it at least attempt the guardianship of fair use of the cultural heritage we are creating now.
my collection 1200+ books contains 20-30% of really bad writting, poor story line or just crappy books ...-
-the kindof what the hell am i reading this for type of book
i wonder what percent of 35000 is low quailty ?
does it come down to quanity vs quality ??
(REF: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
Nice handle, Dix... :-D
Freedom: "I won't!"
That is so ignorant. Automated scanners that gingerly turn the pages of bound volumes have been available for decades. Ignore that troll.
Bad things can happen to plastic (and the things sealed in it) over time. The first order of business should probably be to get the stuff out of whatever it's in and into something with good archival properties.
Librarians, of course, already know this.
Mind the Gap
it would be very cool to have the note cards mentioned linked with the digital archive. it's a shame that the possibilities of the web are being sacrificed to selfish concerns. i imagine that the new tenth circle to hell will house hillary and her friends. rot baby!
I just hope they take better care of Gibson's collection than UCSC took of the stuff Heinlen donated to them. Last time I looked, they still had his pre-Campbell Astoundings in the open stacks!
For those interested in studying SF: The "Center for the Study of Science Fiction" at http://www.ku.edu/~sfcenter/.
The University of Kansas also has a SF Special Collection library that houses SF books and magazines. http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/sc/sf.htm
Optical media are great until the vendor decides to kill the product line and you can't get new disks, device drivers or replacement parts for the drives. This has happened to data archives I've worked with. You better hope that someone can find the funding to buy a new system and move all the data from the old system before it dies.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Here is the reply I received from the Archives on how to donate $$ for restoration of the collection: Your request for information about donating to restoration of our new collection was passed to me. I must say your offer is really very much appreciated. As you might have read or heard, we are grateful and thrilled to have this important collection, but our work and costs to catalogue and preserve it has just begun. The University can cover some costs, but we depend on donations from concerned and interested people such as yourself in order to do the major work. A donation in any amount will help us ensure that this collection is properly preserved and made accessible for future generations, and you can be proud of contributing to that. You can send a cheque to myself at the address below, and it should be made out to "University of Calgary", then mark on the front somewhere, "Gibson Collection". We will process it and then in due course, we'll send you a tax receipt. If you need any more information, please be sure to contact me at any of the addresses on this email. I will be away for a couple of weeks, but my emails and phone will tell you how to contact my Associate, Lauren Spencer, if you need to. The address for mailing is: Blane Hogue Director of Development, Information Resources Room 750, MacKimmie Library University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive N.W. CALGARY T2N 1N4 Thanks again for your interest. Sincerely, -- Blane Hogue Director of Development, Information Resources University of Calgary
I prefer to study the roll of women instead of the role of women, but i'm just annoying that way.
I've always wondered what sort of philanthropic sorts of things I would put my money into if I had an excess of wealth. Just one of those recurring daydreams we all have when sitting at our desks wishing it were lunchtime. So far, I've been unable to put my finger on one thing that just grabs me and shouts, "You must do this!" Helping stop rainforest depletion, buying up unbuilt land around my house and donating it to the regional parks, etc., all seem like obvious good causes, but somehow they just don't touch my soul.
I have now found the calling for my money. The half mil it will take to manage this unparalleled science fiction literature collection is a drop in the bucket to preserve something so important. There are lots of people helping save the rainforests, but until now, who has looked after preserving these words that cannot be replaced? Should they be lost, they will only live in the fading memories of the people who have read them, a la Fahrenheit 451.
As soon as I win the lottery, I'll be writing them a check. I'll probably send them money anyway, but it would be most excellent to fund it all in one fell swoop.
Didn't mean here :-)
... but I'm wandering off topic so I'll shutup now (off topic on /. - shame on me :-)
However, I've been involved in lots of conversations (many with technical people who should know better) of the everything-should-be-digital / its-all-different-now / librarians-know-nothing variety in the past.
There does seem to be a tendency for some people in the technical arena to overlook/underestimate the field. I also think this lack of understanding is one of the reasons you see degrees in librarianship suddenly becoming Information Science, or variations thereof. Which I think is sad. Maybe that's just me.
Cheers,
Adrian
In the Mid 1960's, when I was in college, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Being a pack rat I kept the books, which were in paperback format.
A couple of years ago my teenage son took them down off the shelf and started to read them. Sure enough, they began to fall apart.
Dad, he said, why did you get such crummy books.
Bill, I replied, If I had known 35 years ago that you would want to read them I would have bought the hardbacks.
We, laughed and I took him to Borders and bought him fresh copies.
Hi - apologies for previous cut-short post; the man in question was William Robert (Bob) Gibson, a long time resident of Calgary, Alberta. He collected SF & F material, starting in the mid 1920s until he couldn't anymore, some time in 1999 or 2000. He died on Jan 8, 2001. There is lots more information at http://www.fp.ucalgary.ca/unicomm/news/gibson/
"This is almost certainly not the case. The idea that books turn to dust on the shelves is largely false. Even books printed on quite acidic paper will probably last for centuries (with typical research library handling frequency) if they are well looked after."
:-} )and may exist only in those copies at this date.
They are not book as a rule. They are PULPS. Magazines printed on paper that would be considered low quality even by newspaper publishers. Add to that the fact that they may have color artwork that used unstable inks/dyes. Add to that that they are already old, 75+ for many. Maybe some were pH buffered by Mr. Gibson as he collected them, maybe not - the treatments are not cheap and add up fast. They will already be fragile. They are not going to take much additional handling.
They shouldn't be cut up to scan, but they need to be scanned ASAP. On the plus side, they don't have book style binding. They should tolerate a fair amount of flattening for a good scan.
They should be more broadly available to be read than these could possibly tolerate. A lot of that old stuff has never been reprinted (some quite desevedly
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I'm a sci-fi fan (I have a mere 1000 books) but I wish the U. of Calgary would spend $250,000 on SCIENCE books. They had a good collection up to 1980 but then stopped buying.
MITSFS has a very limited amount of space.
If you want their collection to grow, so
would they. Enough students asking and they
might get better office space.
Why would you cut them up? Wouldn't you just have an illuminated platform onto which you would put the book, snap a picture, turn the page, etc.? Some software would find the page areas in the pictures and warp them straight in post processing? It seems like you could fairly easily build a system that an intern could operate which would generate a PDF out the other end.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What they really should do is start contacting the fan groups that put on conventions (Like BSFS here in Baltimore). Any of these groups should jump at the chance to do a charity auction to raise money to catalog the William Gibson library. ;}
"Choosy browsers choose