Inter-Library Loan and the Woes of Having A Small Library
A long time ago, while talking to an inter-library loan librarian, I asked whether or not our library (an R1 school with a large research library) kept copies of the various PDFs we received through ILL. I said that I figured that would make sense, since it would allow our library to keep those files on hand should they be requested again and given the cheapness of databases and file storage, it wouldn't be too expensive to maintain. He said no, and to his knowledge, no one had ever brought it up.
Today, a year or two later, I asked myself the question again as I was returning from my current library, which is not an R1 and has limited holdings. Why not maintain copies of all these PDFs?
And then I wondered whether or not a model like Bittorrent might be useful, as well? If I keep all my PDFs in a folder that's always available to others, you could simply search for the file you want and maybe someone will have it. Quicker and easier than ILL in some ways, and the more academics who do it, the larger it'll become.
Any library people/academics here? Any thoughts?
Cheers
Scott
Today, a year or two later, I asked myself the question again as I was returning from my current library, which is not an R1 and has limited holdings. Why not maintain copies of all these PDFs?
And then I wondered whether or not a model like Bittorrent might be useful, as well? If I keep all my PDFs in a folder that's always available to others, you could simply search for the file you want and maybe someone will have it. Quicker and easier than ILL in some ways, and the more academics who do it, the larger it'll become.
Any library people/academics here? Any thoughts?
Cheers
Scott
Comments
Originally posted by Scott
Huh? Where do these PDFs come from for the ILL?
My understanding is that the lending library scans them.
Originally posted by BRussell
Good idea. But I think they'd have to contain very long file names, or some kind of metadata, to make them truly searchable. I also wonder if there would be copyright issues with people getting these things like this rather than getting direct copies from the sources themselves.
I'm sure copyright would be an issue, but for the moment the bittorrent model is technically legal, isn't it?
And yes. Long file names. Can't bittorrent do that?
Originally posted by midwinter
I'm sure copyright would be an issue, but for the moment the bittorrent model is technically legal, isn't it?
I don't know, but I would assume that any file-sharing model itself is legal, it's just what it is that you're sharing that causes the problem.
I hope that more and more journals go to full text online for campus libraries. That would make this unnecessary.
Originally posted by BRussell
I hope that more and more journals go to full text online for campus libraries. That would make this unnecessary.
Sure. But I'm thinking about the older stuff, which could slowly over time be turned into PDFs and archived.
Originally posted by Scott
The older stuff has no more copyright on them either.
Good point!
http://projecteuclid.org:80/Dienst/UI/1.0/Home
and
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicl...ary-DPubS.html
Originally posted by Scott
The older stuff has no more copyright on them either.
Dover Press puts out some good stuff though much of it is dated. Dover relies exclusively on expired copyrights.
Originally posted by BRussell
Good idea. But I think they'd have to contain very long file names, or some kind of metadata, to make them truly searchable. I also wonder if there would be copyright issues with people getting these things like this rather than getting direct copies from the sources themselves.
Fortunately, PDF's already contain a bunch of title, author, and keyword data.
Originally posted by midwinter
I thought I'd resurrect this thread in light of the awesome new Google Scholar.
I don't know what field the original poster is in, but our school (regional comprehensive) has a very limited library. After years of resisting it, our library now pays for the ACS backfile (all ACS journals --- I'm a chemist), and most other journals through Science Direct. I rarely need a reference I can't immediately download and save to my own HD. Often they are scanned PDFs, but at least I can read them.
I agree that ILL and waiting (and waiting....) for a scanned copy through ILL is just infuriating. Another big help for us is SciFinder Scholar, which I think is through CAS (Chemical Abstracts service), and is VERY expensive. We have one concurrent login for the whole campus, but I've only bumped into someone once (this week actually).
Originally posted by machem
I don't know what field the original poster is in, but our school (regional comprehensive) has a very limited library. After years of resisting it, our library now pays for the ACS backfile (all ACS journals --- I'm a chemist), and most other journals through Science Direct. I rarely need a reference I can't immediately download and save to my own HD. Often they are scanned PDFs, but at least I can read them.
I agree that ILL and waiting (and waiting....) for a scanned copy through ILL is just infuriating. Another big help for us is SciFinder Scholar, which I think is through CAS (Chemical Abstracts service), and is VERY expensive. We have one concurrent login for the whole campus, but I've only bumped into someone once (this week actually).
Great. I work predominantly on evangelical journals from the mid-19th century. ACS got any of those on file?
These things tend to snowball so I can see it all being swept away within ten years, five if we're lucky.
One potential future: http://www.plos.org/
Originally posted by midwinter
I thought I'd resurrect this thread in light of the awesome new Google Scholar.
Yeah I was playing with that and it looked interesting. From what I can tell, it just kind of scours the internet for copies of the paper in question. Many authors have their articles as pdfs on their web page, and google will link to it. But more often than not in my noodling around the paper wasn't online at all, so you maybe get an abstract from the journal publisher's website.
And I want you to admit it, what was the first author name you searched for?
Originally posted by BRussell
And I want you to admit it, what was the first author name you searched for?
That would be my own, of course. My most recent article wasn't there.
Originally posted by BRussell
From what I can tell, it just kind of scours the internet for copies of the paper in question.
Quite a lot of it's based on private (for pay) collections and other non-internet resources e.g. you can search for John Grisham and find his books then click on the link to find a nearby University Library that holds that particular book. Or you can be taken to a for-pay collection that your institution has a site licence for.
I think (based purely on guesswork) that Google calculates what's scholarly and not based on analysing citations, even if those citations are for novels or websites. It can only be a matter of time before people start smuggling citations of porn websites into their publications.