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Re: [Killietalk] Question
Good heavens, the voice of reason.
As the person who undertook this project some years ago, I acknowledge
that it has been slow coming. I apologize for that but we are close to
having the first volume (1962-1970) done and the emergence of someone
willing to help with the production of the actual CD is encouraging.
Wright Huntley is a good friend of mine, so I say this reluctantly. In
my opinion, much of what he posted earlier on this topic is nonsense.
First, copyright is copyright. There's no such thing as a little bit
copyright. Second, the BOT, at the time this project was conceived, made
the decision that the product would be in PDF format, would be faithful
in layout and appearance to the original, that the documents would be
searchable and that they would be valuable as an archive. Producing it
in Word format, which would not be faithful to the originals, with jpegs
that could be copied and misused, was considered to be an unacceptable
option. I can tell you that more than one author would object to their
material, particularly photos, being distributed in that way.
I also take great exception to Wright's snide attitude regarding how
long this project is taking. The sarcasm doesn't become you Wright. Even
to get as far as we have has taken a huge effort on my part. First I had
to fill in the gaps in my personal collection of JAKA, Killie Notes and
other AKA publications. Those are not easy to come by and I am thankful
to those people who have helped me with that. Second, every page has to
be scanned at consistent high quality, subjected to optical character
recognition to turn an image into searchable text, and proof-read. I
don't know how many of you have every tried to do OCR on old documents
from the 60s, printed in an old Courier font with lines that are not
even straight, on poor quality paper. If you haven't, you have no idea
what the proof-reading and correction task is like.
Personal issues have sometimes caused delays in my ability to work on
this project. Yes, a few people offered help. In general those were
along the lines of "I can scan a few issues". I'm afraid I could not
accept such offers due to the likelihood of variation in scanning
quality. I have bought a top quality flatbed scanner, at my own expense,
to do this project because we need high quality if photos etc. are to be
useful. I can also tell you that at least two people who did offer to
help with aspects of the project, withdrew without contributing.
Richard, I thank you for pointing out the realities associated with an
undertaking like this. Finally, I do not intend to engage in a flame war
on this topic. I would appreciate it if members would restrain
themselves and not start one on killietalk. I posted this with some
reluctance, but in the end decided that I am entitled to defend my efforts.
Barry Cooper
Barry J. Cooper
Sweet Home, OR 97386
Richard Pierce wrote:
> I don't know anything about the politics behind the project but it is a very
> large undertaking and the final appearance of the project has everything to
> do with the usability of the journal archives. You also have to take into
> account how rapidly the technology has changed. If the archive had come out
> 8 years ago it would probably have had a custom interface and there is a
> good chance that it would not even be useable on a modern computer.
>
> Scanning the pages and presenting them as simple jpegs would mean that they
> would not be searchable. Organizing a bunch of word documents and jpeg
> files into a coherent and useful archive is also problematic. Ideally the
> original slides would be scanned and presented in color instead of black &
> white, and they should also be searchable. Does anyone really want to sit
> through page after page of word documents and then have to find the
> assocated jpgs? Word documents are not the easiest way to read text on the
> computer screen.
>
> As someone who has hundreds of scientific papers in both PDF and physical
> forms I can tell you that once you get beyond 50 or a 100 documents,
> organization becomes more and more difficult. If you have the paper but
> can't find it when you need it, you might as well not even have it. For
> killies, you want to be able to search by author, species or genus, and
> country of origin at a minimum. Besides species breeding accounts you have
> travelog type articles. You should be able to find any species encountered
> in these papers also. Here is a question: is it more useful to have one PDF
> file per issue or one per article? I think that single articles are better
> for research but worse for browsing old issues. Most of the scientific
> journals I am familiar with don't have their digital archives go back past
> the 90's if they go that far. For a hobby organization to attempt to do
> what most professional organizations have rejected as impractical is a major
> undertaking. Have there even been any plans of making digital archives of
> old TFH, FAMA, Buntbarsche Bulletins etc.? And finally, no matter what the
> end product is, there will be some who are unhappy with the results.
>
> Rich Pierce
> Massachusetts
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: killietalk-bounces at aka_org [mailto:killietalk-bounces at aka_org]On
> Behalf Of Wright Huntley
> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 3:43 PM
> To: killifish discussion list
> Subject: Re: [Killietalk] Question
>
>
> Al had some good points, but BOT policy, I suspect, has sabotaged things
> nearly beyond repair.
>
> AKA has a responsibility to protect the intellectual property of authors
> and photographers (by strictly observing copyrights), but they have had
> a tendency to treat them as if they were the Great American Novel, or
> the newest release of Windoze, worth many millions. The AKA BOT should
> never try to be the intellectual property police. It is up to the DVD
> (not CD, by the way) buyer to respect the copyright. [HD or Blu-Ray DVD
> will be obsolete well before the project is finished, at the present rate.]
>
> Attempting to treat the project as an archival thing, rather than to get
> the information into the hands of breeders and other hobbyists has done
> little to speed things up.
>
> Unlike Al and Donna, I have not saved my old Journals with any
> regularity, so I am possibly more anxious for the project to move ahead
> than maybe they are.
>
> I would strongly prefer the information in Word, so I could copy and
> paste (within fair-use rules, of course), search, and otherwise actually
> use the information. Acrobat makes many uses difficult if not
> impossible. Reprints of the Journal are not data sheets or product
> manuals that must be protected against spoofing, nor are they binding
> legal contracts. Why treat them as such?
>
> I see no reason why simply scanning them into Word and attaching
> pictures as JPEGs wouldn't get the job done fairly quickly and easily.
> As Al says, it is the information we want. Most of us don't give a xxxx
> about what a sixties document actually looked like, or even want to try
> to read garbled text on a mottled background.
>
> Just my 2 cents,
>
> Wright
>
> Donna M. Recktenwalt wrote:
>
>> We, too, "way back when", had offered to help out. Our offer wasn't
>>
> taken..
>
>> Donna and Tom Recktenwalt
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Al Anderson" <augustand at sbcglobal_net>
>> To: "killifish discussion list" <killietalk at aka_org>
>> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:51 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Killietalk] Question
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Dear Dr. Cooper,
>>> You have had the project for over 10 years it is about time to get it
>>> done!.
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Wright Huntley - 805 Valley West Cir., Bishop CA 93514
> whuntley at verizon_net 760 872-3995. Cell 760 937-2276
>
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>
> Join the AKA at http://www.aka.org/aka/modules/content/index.php?id=9.
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>
>
>
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