here here On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm just back from a weekend conference and a few days in the > San Jose / Palo Alto area, which I had intended to spend doing > research in the Stanford libraries. Stanford used to have the > best physics/technical library on the West Coast. > > Perhaps they still do, if you are a student or professor, have > access to their electronic books, and can do proper research with > one screen at a time. But their hard science book library is now > only 8 rows of 24 feet of shelving, with 95% of their collection > in offsite storage. Stanford has "less on the floor" than Portland > State University (or San Jose State, now the south bay leader). > > Journal articles are institutional subscription, or $35 per article > for outsiders. Portland State is the same deal, except many of the > same journals are still on PSU shelves. > > In the quest for "convenience", universities are surrendering their > freedom to the four big academic monopolies. When paper versions > disappear, you can bet that the monopolies will raise prices until > the universities have to choose between academic staff and online > access. With the DMCA protecting publishers, who's to stop them? > > For now, Oregon Health Sciences University, Washington State, and > the University of Washington still permit visitors access to their > online collections, but this is expensive and could disappear. > Worse, common-mode information system vulnerabilities at the big > four could wipe out much of the academic corpus. If the lights > are blinking on a backup drive during a restore, is that actually > a restore, or an erasure? > > Yes, electronic journals are convenient. But copies should be > widely distibuted: purchase the content once, watermarked perhaps, > and keep a copy on your local institutional hardware, forever. > > If the publishes insist on monopoly custody, or even monoculture > software and hardware, then they should operate their monopolies > subject to capital punishment (!) for executives and stockholders if > they irretrievably lose civilization's crown jewels. Those will be > a fraction of the lives that will be lost if this vital information > disappears. > > Aaron Schwartz died for our sins. We're next. > > Keith > > -- > Keith Lofstrom [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
