Slashdot Mirror
National Academies Release Over 4,000 Free Science Books
Shipud writes "The National Academies Press are offering all their books for free in PDF format. These are all the publications of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. Lots of great stuff there, and now for free."
Electricity. You can't explain that. http://i.imgur.com/4hfC6.jpg
sig not found
Eg, looking for a math book and all I see is shit like "Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty"
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This isn't "Free as in Freedom" it's "Free as in Promotional".
FTFA:
Printed books will continue to be available for purchase through the NAP website and traditional channels. The free PDFs are available exclusively from the NAP’s website, http://www.nap.edu/, and remain subject to copyright laws. PDF versions exist for the vast majority of NAP books. Exceptions include some books that were published before the advent of PDFs; books from the Joseph Henry Press imprint; and in cases where contractually prohibited, such as reference books in the Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals series.
So, you can download them to your computer, but you can't (legally) make a copy for your friend... This isn't the free as in "land of the free" that I grew up learning about... seems like a trap to me. "How did you know that without ever buying our book or downloading our PDF? You must be a sea faring rapist and murderous theif!"
Let me know when it's released under a CC license, then I'll think about downloading it.
Yeah, but does it blend? ZING! Nailed that one, haha.. didn't see that one coming did you!!
This gives more citations, - i.e. it's a win-win!
What do you cite if you're on a tight budget? The free stuff, not necessarily the most "relevant" stuff (said the cynic, in me, too); here, the relevant stuff may be cited in the free stuff, so why not, the logical chain is there.
If you are doing 'research' that needs to reference previous public studies, this is great news. (If you are associated with a university or large institution you probably already had access it). This is not the place for discovering how something works (hint: try wikipedia), this is a place for discovering how we use something and what it means for the public.
Yes, these books are useful.
Coming from academia there are some rather obscure subjects
there, but why not read about the handling and management of
chemicals? That which is not common is still useful. I daresay
that skipping over the more "odd" things is an inditement of the
educational system. Reading that which doesn't interest you at
first is a great way to learn new things, just as reading political
views you don't agree with might broaden your ideas.
Me, I'm going back to trough now. I only have about 50 of
them,
Keeping the opposition about 5,000 leaps of faith ahead.
--
New Expletive: IS
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
Please won't someone download all of these and post a torrent?
Very often, the books and papers from NAS, NAE, IOM and NRC provide excellent references by the best people in the country and are very good evaluations of current research, and how we got there. In my work in indoor air quality microbiology, I downloaded one of their books (a page at a time), and the references and reviews were exceptionally helpful in my keeping current and interpreting data. Making their work available for downloading in large units is awesome!
The titles alone put me to sleep in seconds. I can't help but wonder when various Bush appointees will classify the book titles as a federally controlled substance?
Mountains of Madness: A Scientist's Odyssey in Antarctica
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9848
has no obvious downlaod button
but neccessary url can be constructed
has some H.P.Lovecraft connections
that's as nerdy as it may get
I immediately found a book for $99.95 and downloaded it. Saved almost $100!
I'll come back tomorrow and see if I can find five more for $99.95, so I can buy a new laptop.
- yep I learned logical reasoning from the music industry.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html ... Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations. "
"An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It requires a registered account to download the PDFs. And, to be honest, I wasn't much excited about the titles either. Are there any gems that are really worth making an account for?
Read something very similar from a local (Bosnian) version of a religious "textbook".
Only this one was about plants (as in trees) being food-factories.
The fun part: science has no fucking clue how do "the juices" get pumped from the ground, up through the trunk and into the branches and fruit.
"There are several theories, but none of them have been able to provide the answer."
That particular one is from a Muslim "textbook". Others are not much different. It's a built-in defect.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
(With light parody of one of the texts)
The Slashdot Community forgets its own arguments over time.
This is one particular publisher releasing its archive. It's Academia - the stuff that used to cost $200 per book, which made us all furious at the Book Scam. Now they have released every single one of their texts for download, and the whole point is that you can convert it to text from the PDF. Every one of these can become a podcast. If you and five buddies like it/them, you just have a LAN party and you each download your books.
All those Intro to X books are covered elsewhere. These are the specific topics that you have to read several of, and read between the lines, to really extract the useful parts. Ah yes, this is Slashdot, we champion the art of not reading long texts!
The bigger point is if the OTHER science publishers ALSO released their collections, you could get your favorite Intro to X books from the Houghton Mifflin branch of whoever owns it now. Then you have the best of all worlds.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think I saw a "continue as guest" option but really, just sign up and get some street cred in the academic circles.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So, you can download them to your computer, but you can't (legally) make a copy for your friend... This isn't the free as in "land of the free" that I grew up learning about... seems like a trap to me. "How did you know that without ever buying our book or downloading our PDF? You must be a sea faring rapist and murderous theif!"
More evidence for the theory that no good deed goes unpunished. The +5 informative is just sad.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You're on to something.
You can either browse them on the site by topic, or even play the fun lottery game I found called "guess the ID number". I'll get you guys started:
8 10 11 13 15 19 21 22 25 30 35 40 41 54 55 56 58 61 63 75 80 81 86 91 92 100 101.
They made the books absolutely as clean as they could, no DRM, it extracts to text for podcasting, and so on. However we have a surprising number of people in the thread under their logged in names saying "meh, it's not a torrent so I can't share it".
We have a variant of the True Scotsman fallacy going on here. This is literally a Million Dollar archive (assuming new horrid academic prices of some $250 average per book). But 30% of the thread comments are "why is this not a torrent?". And there's the secret. Lots of torrenters don't ever plan to exhaust the materials in their torrent. They just like having it like collecting mushrooms in a video game.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Unfortunately, I can see where a comment like "no torrent?!?" makes sense - someone appreciates that it is being shared, and would like to help take a small fraction of the load/cost away from the source, even if they never plan to use the materials themselves.
For example, I have no plan on upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04, but I torrented it to upload 20gb of each cd on the release day - I have the bandwidth/resources, and it was a way of giving back. Not planning on running Slackware again anytime soon, but I torrented it for a while too when 13.37 was released.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
"Gender Inequalities in the Early Education of Environmental Policy - Summary of a Workshop in Provincetown."
Lots of these are quite specialised. For a broad intro to physics (up to general relativity and quantum theory), try Motion Mountain:
http://motionmountain.net/
- lower download data costs, &
- they'd have another form of feedback on how popular each title is
(eg, by the # of [seeds &] peers each attracts, & for how long...)
(Of course, in time, they'll still need to be the main source... so, it could be a short-term savings.)
PS If they don't... perhaps people will soon start put together packages of NAP books, for BT distrib'n...?
True
Congrats to the Foundation! Maybe this will get more people to study and understand science. I hope some other institutions follow suit.
There are three good reasons for them to keep the copyright.
1. They can prevent people from modifying the originals (eg: for political propoganda).
2. They can still make a few bucks from people who want to order the hard copies for whatever reason.
3. Attracts people to their website.
Besides, even though technically you can't copy them I very much doubt they care if you do so in good faith.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm not sure. Every research institute or university has access to pretty much all relevant journals through site contracts.
yes please, im looking for this too
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