The Stanford Libraries blog covers digitization projects, archives, and collections, including computing history material like Ted Nelson's email and Jef Raskin's proposals.
HN links it for archive and computing-history posts. Comments mention Stanford library resources and a tracker of mass shootings, with no overall opinion of the blog.
I think you are voicing a frustration here which is not coupled to your earlier point.
If I am wrong about my interpretation, let me point out that the US system isn't especially better than other developed countries in this respect.
For example, the local college library to where I went to high school in Miami requires a fee to enter the library. http://library.miami.edu/policies/non-um-patron-access/ . (As a student in an advanced class, we got a special pass to allow us to do research in the library.) A member of the public can only visit the Stanford university library for free for 7 days of the year (http://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/visitor-access-and-borrowing ).
You mention open stacks, and I fully appreciate the joy of being able to browse. However, your enthusiasm about any US experience must be tempered. Many US academic libraries have off-campus shelving (eg, https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/using-the-library/request-books-from-off-campus-shelving/ and http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/junk.Shelving/WorkingGroup.html ). Quoting from the last of those two URLs:
> Many universities, including Harvard, have successfully adopted off-campus shelving as a way to meet both their shelving and preservation needs.* Such shelving costs a tenth of what on-campus shelving costs, and it provides nearly ideal conditions for the long-term preservation of library materials. The principal disadvantage of off-campus shelving is that readers cannot…
Reposting this about a historic project that Charles Moore himself worked on:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29261868
DonHopkins 8 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Forth vs Lisp
Coco Conn and Paul Rother wrote this up about what they did with FORTH at HOMER & Assoc, who made some really classic music videos including Atomic Dog, and hired Charles Moore himself! Here's what Coco Conn posted about it, and some discussion and links about it that I'm including with her permission:
Peter Conn:
https://imgur.com/a/4Bmb4xu
Homer & Associates (1982):
http://leftbrain.us/rotherHistory/homer.html
Peter Conn Papers at Stanford:
https://library.stanford.edu/blogs/special-collections-unbound/2019/05/peter-conn-papers-available-research
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8n303pn/entire_text/
George Clinton - Atomic Dog (Official Music Video) HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVZ36VA0wg
Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY8B0uQpwZs
Steve Miller Band - Bongo Bongo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NrsRZdMI-A
Flying Logos for 1989 Siggraph Electronic Theater:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIOfEiy4lc
>First shown at the 1989 Siggraph Electronic Theater to a rave response, this 3 minute humourous film went on to win several top computer graphic awards that same year including Niccograph of Japan.
>Coco: This was a show favorite at the SIGGRAPH film show that year. The year before the conference committee decided…
Yes. I've found criteria for new books at public libraries to be very limiting. They usually will only acquire newly published books (published within a year or so). But they do get a discount from the publisher, perhaps 30%.
Basically, they will buy books that nobody's had a chance to review yet or talk about, but won't buy books published a year ago that everyone cites and recommends. It's a broken policy.
I'd say it is a way to avoid the high cost of books tho, in that they are a shared resource. Dozens of people may check out a single copy within a year. E-books at public libraries are more accessible, but only a finite number of copies may be accessed by patrons at a time - less accessible than you might think. Additionally, e-books are not owned, but leased. And the cost is substantial and comparable to the cost of a physical copy, and re-paid every few years.
Another way libraries avoid the cost of new books is by relying on other libraries to expand their collection. When my local library joined LINK+, for instance, they substantially decreased the amount of new books they would acquire, and it's stripping influence from the individual patron. Good luck borrowing a copy of Laws of Software Engineering [0] anywhere. Or Crafting Interpreters [1].
As far as university collections go, most have large libraries with huge collections that are available to borrow - somehow. But most of the books are very old. The new acquisitions are primarily digital and may only be…
You can visit some of the libraries (listed below from [0]) and request access to most of the archival collections, but you won't be able to borrow anything from either. Note that [0] also applies to the free visits (7 days per year) as well, not just the fee-based library card holders.
- Art & Architecture
- Branner Earth Sciences
- East Asia
- Green
- Music
- Science (Li & Ma)
- Terman Engineering
Note that the video games in the collection are considered archival materials, it requires requesting material online ahead of time and you may only use it in a reading room[1] (unless I think you're assigned as a proxy lender by a faculty member, but you have to be a student/affiliate to be one) and the process is open to the public[2]. IIRC from my freshman year when I did a paper on video games, they had special reading rooms with equipment to use the video games, but that was over 10 years ago now. You may need to also request/reserve the necessary equipment as well.
0: https://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/privileges-university-library-affiliates/fee-based-library-cards
1: https://guides.library.stanford.edu/c.php?g=1024656&p=7865812
2: https://library.stanford.edu/spc/using-our-collections
The article offers a conjecture, but other than that, it's not too helpful, and focuses too much on one incident.
The Stanford libraries have a mass shooting tracker.[1] It's not complete; it comes from what they could find with social media. They have an interactive map. Interestingly, some likely areas show few mass shootings. Manhattan has zero. New York City as a whole has two. (One was family related, another was someone shooting their supervisor, so they were ordinary motive-driven murders, not random targets) New York City is doing something right.
Looking at incidents on the map, it's striking how few of the motive-less killings happened in major cities. It's more of a suburban problem.
[1] https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america
> Non-repudiation over time is a truly powerful property of DKIM'd email for a great many uses outside of blackmail.
This. Publishing the DKIM keys would be a huge loss for email archivists and historians in general. E.g. a couple weeks ago Donald Knuth published all of the emails he's sent and received over the last 20+ years of his career[1], without DKIM how would we know that they are authentic?
[1] https://library.stanford.edu/blogs/special-collections-unbound/2020/10/don-knuth-email-collection-now-available-research