Tag: Information access

The March 2009 Bloodsucker award winner — the Bibliothèque Nationale Français

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In early January I ordered images from the Bibliothèque Nationale Français of a manuscript of the unpublished 13th century Arabic Christian historian, al-Makin.  Today I received a CDROM containing two PDF’s.   The PDF’s were simply scans of a low-grade black-and-white microfilm, of about the same quality as a Google books scan.  One was 40Mb, the other 10Mb.  Together they totalled 640 images.  I also received my credit card bill; these two files cost me $400.

My feelings may be imagined.  At such prices, obtaining several manuscripts is impossible.  And… for that obscene price, could they not have photographed the things in colour?  The black and white images, of course, don’t scale.  The rubrics are lost in the text.  Quite how I print these things I do not know.

Oh yes.  Want a copy?  Well, they sent me a legal notice saying I can’t give you one.  You have to pay them again, if you want to see them.  These, remember, are publicly owned manuscripts!

This is disgusting.  So, with all these reasons in m ind, I award the Bibliothèque Nationale Français the second Bloodsucker award. 

I will award it, ad hoc, to institutions in receipt of state funding which in order to make money violate their primary directive; to make books available and promote learning.

Well done, chaps.  May you all rot in the hell reserved for those who knowingly obstruct the progress of learning.

My previous award was to the John Rylands Library in 2008, also for making it impossibly expensive to obtain a usable copy of a manuscript of al-Makin.

Postscript: I have now discovered that the photographs are of two-page spreads.  Most of the images have a large black band down the centre of the opening, wide enough to obscure the text on the inner margins.  Guess what?  Being black on white, this means that the ends of the words are all unreadable.  And this, for $400.  I have been forced to write back and point this out.  I may have to involve VISA, to recover money for substandard merchandise.  What’s the betting that they simply try to get me to pay yet more money?

UPDATE 6th March 2009: No reply from the BNF.  I’ve now written again and threatened (politely) to go to VISA for a refund.

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Google to digitize every book in the world

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A story this morning in the New York Times: that Google is placing adverts in print media all around the world, large and small, trying to find the owners of copyrights, as part of its agreement with publishers to handle in-copyright material.

As part of the class-action settlement, Google will pay $125 million to create a system under which customers will be charged for reading a copyrighted book, with the copyright holder and Google both taking percentages; copyright holders will also receive a flat fee for the initial scanning, and can opt out of the whole system if they wish.

But first they must be found. Since the copyright holders can be anywhere and not necessarily online — given how many books are old or out of print — it became obvious that what was needed was a huge push in that relic of the pre-Internet age: print. …

The almost comically sweeping attempt to reach the world’s entire literate population is a reflection of the ambitions of the Google Book Search project, in which the company hopes to digitize every book — famous or not, in any language, published anywhere on earth — found in the world’s libraries.

I had wondered whether Google was pushing forward with Google Books, now that Microsoft has pulled out of Live Books, but it seems so.  Very good news.  And this, remember, is for books that are in copyright.

Thanks to Slash.dot for the tip.

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The future of online research

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An important article here in Digital Humanities from Greg Crane of Perseus, looking at where we are and where we go with collections like Archive.org and Perseus.  It includes discussion of experiments with OCR’ing Ancient Greek, and an image of the Venetus A manuscript of Homer.

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An open letter to the Ambrosian Library in Milan

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have today written to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, as follows.

Dear Sir,

I believe that Notre Dame University in the USA have a set of microfilms of the manuscript collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana:

https://hatleylawfirm.com/ambien-zolpidem-online/
http://medieval.library.nd.edu/resources/ambrosiana_mss.shtml

But they say that “Notre Dame is no longer able to supply microfilms or photographs from the Ambrosiana. Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, Prefect of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, has stipulated that all such requests be sent directly to the library.” (and in writing on paper).

Is this true?  If it is true, may I ask why?  It makes the library look bad.

I went to your website, which is in Italian only.  Few English-speakers know Italian well.  I was unable to find any way to order copies of manuscripts.  I was unable to find any manuscripts online.

This is the age of the internet.  Surely it is morally wrong to make it difficult for scholars to access manuscripts?

https://hopehouseclinic.org/get-xanax-online/
Yours sincerely,

Roger Pearse

It would be unfair to criticise a library without giving them the chance to respond, of course.  It will be interesting to see if I get a reply. 

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95% of UK ISP’s implementing censorship machinery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From slashdot.org:

“The UK government stated in 2006 that they wished to see 100% of UK consumer broadband ISPs’ connections covered by blocking, which includes” — but is not limited to — “images of child abuse. 95% of ISPs have complied, but children’s charities are calling for firmer action by the government as the last 5% cite costs and concerns over the effectiveness of the system. According to Home Office Minister Alan Campbell, ‘The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%.’ With a lack of transparency in the IWF list, firm government involvement, and blocking that only ‘includes’ (but may not be limited to) images of child abuse, it looks like the writing is on the wall for unfiltered, uncensored Internet connections in the UK.”

It will soon be 100%, it seems, with the IWF – an unelected quango – deciding which sites may be accessed from the UK.  No-one wants child porn on the web, of course.  But child-porn is the excuse, not the reason.  What this gives the establishment — not even the elected government, for heaven’s sake! — is the power to block sites they don’t like, without appeal or control or, indeed, even our knowledge.

Now that the establishment has a list of sites which every ISP is blocking, how long before entries in it are added for political reasons?  That sites which are (e.g.) seen to be politically incorrect are added?

I give it two years at most.

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The Clavis Patrum Graecorum – what about the workers?!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I lust after the Clavis Patrum Graecorum, Geerard’s multi-volume list in Latin of the Greek and Oriental fathers and their works.  I feel about it like some people must feel about Paris Hilton; something incredibly expensive which one could never afford to run.

You know, this is an essential reference tool, for anyone working with the Fathers.  But who has a personal copy?  Who can afford one?  I don’t live within 60 miles of a copy.

Does anyone know of a way of obtaining copies of this which doesn’t involve hundreds and hundreds of dollars?  Some very expensive and essential texts are bootlegged, I know, in PDF form.  Suggestions very welcome!

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The EThOS of the electronic age

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting statistic from Owen Stephens, who is project director for the EthOS project to make British PhD theses available online (and who picked up and commented on my post about the project – clearly a man on top of his game).  Making theses available online has quite an impact:

To give some indication of the difference this can make, the most popular thesis from the British Library over the entire lifetime of the previous ‘Microfilm’ service was requested 58 times. The most popular electronic thesis at West Virginia University (a single US University) in the same period was downloaded over 37,000 times.

I rather think the EThOS project will be a howling success.  More details on Owen’s blog.

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British Library – taking, not giving

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A story at Slash.dot tells us that the British Library chief, Lynne Brindley, is worried about how websites vanish.   In an article in the left-wing bible, the Guardian, she says that she wants to keep copies of all websites in the .uk domain, so that they don’t disappear forever.

There are several aspects to this story that ought to be more clearly stated. 

Firstly, there is nothing to say that this archive will be available to us.  The last time I looked, it was purely for the benefit of BL staff, and perhaps those few who live close to the building.  Anyone else could take a hike.  “Copyright” was the excuse; but some time back Mrs Brindley got an Act of Parliament passed to enable her to do whatever she wanted in this area.  If she didn’t arrange for a provision for public access to an archive of publically accessible websites, it’s because she didn’t want to.  I’d want to see an explicit commitment to access before I applauded.

Secondly, rather than collecting the material that others put online, when will Brindley actually make the British Library’s holdings available online?  This is especially the case for the medieval manuscripts, which almost no-one can handle and are resolutely kept offline and unphotographed.

As ever, it seems that the British library management is interested only in serving themselves, and not the national interest or the public who pay for them.

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