On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Thomas Dalton <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/3/4 geni <[email protected]>: >> 2009/3/4 Thomas Dalton <[email protected]>: >>> 2009/3/4 geni <[email protected]>: >>>> Doesn't work so well these days. Enough libraries have been closed and >>>> stock sold off that you don't have to get that obscure before you have >>>> to turn to the rather expensive out of county loan system. For example >>>> my county does not have a copy of: >>>> >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_This_Thing_Called_Science%3F >>> >>> Can we not assume the whole world is situated in the middle of North >>> America, please? >> >> I'm kinda British. >> >> Most of the English speaking first world is in a reasonable shape with >> regard to libraries. Outside that I'm not sure. > > Oh, sorry, where you referring to British counties (I'm not sure what > the public library system is in Britain for this kind of thing - I'm a > student so have access to university libraries and inter-library loans > through that which aren't expensive at all - maybe even free)? I > generally assume if someone doesn't say what country they're talking > about then they mean the USA - it's usually a pretty safe assumption.
Interlibrary loans at your university (or public library) are not free at all. They are just free for *you*, because your university picks up the tab for you. The average cost of an item borrowed through ILL at a typical mid-size university is between $20-$30 per item. (google: "average cost interlibrary loan", find lots of studies to this effect). This, however, is part of the cost of doing research. Re: print accessibility: a good rule of thumb about whether something is easy to get or not is whether the item being cited is widely held at many libraries or not (see: http://worldcat.org, though this isn't anything like complete outside North America). I favor printed books that are held by many places over obscure works that are only at one or two whenever possible. Of course, sometimes this isn't possible, and a decent bibliography on any topic may be one of the greatest services Wikipedia provides in a few years. We should strive to cite it all: print works, online works, anything we can get our hands on. -- Phoebe, one of your resident grumpy librarians _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
