I am for all books published, adult or not, being included whether they have some degree of circulation or not. Censorship does not seem to be the least bit compatible with the concept of Open Library.
_ _ _ "Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters." - Rosa Luxemburg Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rogerbailey81 The Militant: http://www.themilitant.com Pathfinder Press: http://www.pathfinderpress.com Granma International: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Stinson" <[email protected]> To: "Open Library -- general discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 10:53 AM Subject: Re: [ol-discuss] 'Adult' books published in the 1960's & 1970's > Though I certainly am not one of the sponsors of the project, I am one of > the volunteers and I would be rather offended if a program that called > itself "Open Library" would in fact be closed to broadly published books, > even if they are controversial. I think in a case like this you want to > look > at common sense: we want to share open knowledge about books, per > http://openlibrary.org/help/faq#oclc , so any book published openly and > that > could reasonably be included in any type of library (public, university or > adult if such a thing exists) should be included. Does that mean we > include > all adult books published? No, but, in general all books published with > some > degree of circulation should be here. This is my opinion, I think it > would > be very counterproductive to start not including books because of some > sense > of moral judgement on them. That simply isn't the role of the librarian. > > I have seen similar discussions at Wikipedia and what it comes down to is: > if you are going to keep a project free and open, then any form of > censorship is against the grain of the mission, whereas reasonable > exclusion > of things which aren't important, or in Wikipedia terms notable, makes > sense. > > Alex Stinson > User:Sadads > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sadads > > On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Stuart Fanning < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> A bit of guidance please. When book censorship lifted in the US in the >> mid to late 1960's a large number of 'adult' books were published, many >> of >> which have become collectable items. Are the owners/sponsors of The Open >> Library happy for these titles to be added, or would prefer for them not >> to >> be? >> >> Thanks, Stuart Fanning >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ol-discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to >> [email protected] >> >> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > Ol-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to > [email protected] > _______________________________________________ Ol-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
