Do You Get Your Money's Worth From The APS

Why not enlist the help of a college, using students that are majoring in subject that would benefit from being able to perform the tasks needed to complete the job. The price could be better.

You used the word panacea appropriately. I declare you winner of the thread.

Dan's right, thorough planning and vetting needs be done beforehand and it's a very long term commitment. Considering the size of the library, I would estimate 30,000 titles would take in excess of five years with four persons working on the project. Then there is the issue of equipment and supplies. OK, so don't do all 30,000 titles.

Who would do it, volunteers? I suspect we already ask too much from our volunteers. New volunteers, paid staff, this is the hardest part of any project, getting the resources and allocating the time. This is not something to be taken lightly.

Art

Art,
My suggestion a few posts back was to allow APS members 'dues credit' for doing it; digitize XX books and get XX dollars off next year's dues.
don

Don,
I read your post and that would give us the numbers. The issue that would need to be addressed is standardization. Everyone would need to use the same file output format. .pdf files would be my suggestion and whatever standard chosen would need to be verified by test documents. Every 10 titles is a free year membership or along those lines. The important part would require someone to manage the effort. As in any project, a great deal of planning is required and time. Keeping in mind that this would be an APS project and until they decide to start something along this line we are just farting in the wind. But, I would volunteer to be in the 1st group to start scanning.

Art

If you ask me ........and nobody did !...........It sounds like something a bunch of old farts would do .Sit around and scan pages that nobody really cares about .My guess is that less than 10% of collectors care about research and literature . The APS Library is used by a few hundred of the 35,000 members. You need to take all those thousands of books that the library has as duplicates each year and get them out into the hinderland as a traveling library or sell those to collectors .............................The APS needs to start thinking of getting new members not entertainting the old farts as posted above . They need to start stamp clubs in those thousands of afternoon empty fast food restuarants. You buy a happy meal or a bean burritos and get 50 free stamps. Then have a APS member there to print album pages so the kid can mount the stamps and use their smart phone to do a write up on the page .BANG !! a winner for education ,a winner for the restaurant ,a winner for the APS and parents are seeing their kid is using their phone to get smart and not just getting the bid and ask quote from the local dope market .

1. You're wrong. If there's a reason few people use reference material, it's one of availability and accessibility. Make the material more readily available and more people will use it and/or become interested in it.

2. Do you ever get tired of deliberately alienating people or is it just a hobby?

Signed, not-an-old-fart.

I definitely agree. Although not everyone will be interested in all areas of specialization, if you make reference materials easily available, it may spark an interest. Neinken's plating books are a great example - out of print and $50-$100 ea, the average collector may not be able to afford one. But if you make them available in digital format, you might be surprised at how many collectors take an interest in plating.




If one trades stamps for enough bean burritos, one could accomplish both tasks!

Brian

we needed something to wake up people and enjoy with their morning coffee .lol

Floortrader , I'm an "old fart" and proud of it. ( no offense taken )However , I'm not going to sit around scanning pages. I've got better things to do. Never pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight , he will just shoot you.

Very entertaining.

Interesting suggestion about members digitizing books at home. When I received some materials from the APRL, I immediately digitized them (well okay lets say I hypothetically digitized them as it might not be strictly legal to do so) so I wouldn't have to reorder the same materials later. I needed them for reference beyond the due date. I thought about communicating that fact to the APRL to see if they wanted my (hypothetically) digitized copies, but didn't because they weren't perfect and somewhat randomly segmented into what I thought were "chapters".

I don't know what value that paragraph has to this conversation. Interesting anecdote maybe?

Digitizing is not the same as a library lending a book; it is more akin to republishing the book. And this is where is gets a bit sticky for all libraries.

Tara Murray (APRL) is well aware of the situation and to paraphrase her from an email to the Philatelic Librarians Group, 'purchasing a physical book allows you to lend or sell the item. But when you purchase a digital publication and make it available online, you are not lending a physical item but rather making a copy of the protected work, so you need a license.'

So any digitization efforts need to be restricted to public domain or those where the licensing has been granted by the author/owner of the work. Sadly many philatelic groups see things like archived society publications as potential sources of revenue.

So any effort to like this would have to begin with identifying what could be legally digitized. Hopefully the APRL has already begun trying to identify these works and also begin investigation for getting permission from others. But Tara is very well versed in copyright laws and digitization.

Anyone who might be interested in learning more about philatelic libraries and the storing of philatelic can apply to join the Google Philatelic Librarians Group. You can do this by contacting Tara, there is no cost.
don

Edit; I would add that digital copyrights are different then 'hard copy' copyrights. Many folks, like Amos, are in the process of updating their licensing arrangements with authors. This is not a trivial task.

Very interesting poll results. For the most part, it seems to be going either to one extreme or the other.


-IBFS