4 ms·

Most of the university students have to almost all scientific documents thanks to the library subscriptions of their universities. It will be really easy to fil

by elvirs 16y ago

Most of the university students have to almost all scientific documents thanks to the library subscriptions of their universities. It will be really easy to fill the website with thousands of papers but is it worth it? is it right to do so? If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries and get access to any paper you need without violating copyright.

wvoq 16y ago
A data point: I have actually tried this. As a student at No Name State, I often found myself travelling to nearby Prestigious Research University for books and journals which weren't in circulation at NNS. PRU only had reciprocity agreements with other PRUs, so I couldn't ILL materials or check them out in person with my NNS card. Indeed, without a PRU ID I couldn't even enter the library except at certain designated hours, for reasons that had no discernible relation to crowding or public safety. PRU did offer a private membership, but its annual circulation fee was in the hundreds of dollars. It was 2008, and one of the richest universities in the country wanted to charge a student--who was already enrolled in NNS down the street, hardly any kind of flight risk--the equivalent of 20 hours of labor for the privilege of reading books. Now PRU has one of the worst academic cultures I've ever experienced or heard of, and I would be glad to learn that the state of public access to academic libraries is not so dire in general. It remains, though, that it is not always so trivially easy to do academic work at university libraries, even if you're already in "the academy".
- bigfudge 16y ago
  I'm curious, why not name names? Are PRU's librarians that evil?
mechanical_fish 16y ago
If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries Warning: Pet peeve alert. Scientists routinely complain that the public unfairly brands them as isolated ivory-tower eggheads whose work is too insular and rarefied to have any relevance to the real world. They also complain that the general public has a poor idea of how science actually works: People often view it as some kind of alternative religion in which the priests stand in front of documentary cameras wearing white coats and handing down dogma. Then these scientists turn around and publish most of their actual writing and almost one hundred percent of their data, data-driven reasoning, and detailed experimental design in journals which are prohibitively expensive to read unless you're currently affiliated with a university. Which is, in turn, exorbitantly expensive, either in cash or in opportunity cost. Trying to understand science without reading the primary literature is like trying to understand jazz by reading the New York Times and watching the occasional Ken Burns documentary. Reviewers do write a lot about jazz, and they go on an on about how important and highbrow it all is, but if you haven't actually listened to a jazz piece for more than two minutes you're never going to get the point. Jazz is about the music. Science is about the detailed methods and the data and the literature.
- elvirs 16y ago
  you don't have to be a student or pay the university to use the library.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    You have obviously never been to Harvard, where in fact you do. (You can also work at Harvard and get a library card as a perk. I often contemplate this fact.) The good news is that MIT has a much more awesome library and you can, in fact, turn up in person at MIT as a civilian and read copies of Nature. Of course, you have to make the time to do that. The parking is tricky, so you'd best ride the train. Even in the Boston area I have yet to find a neighborhood library with a Nature subscription. If, in fact, you know where I can legally get access to, say, the Nature and Science journals without either paying hundreds of dollars a year or physically traveling to the local college library please, please paste the instructions here.
    - elvirs 16y ago
      ok this is what you do: you go to the library only once, get a membership card and a username/password for electronic use. and use that username/password to access electronic resources of that library from anywhere. i hope this helps. edit:grammar.
      - djacobs 16y ago
        Harvard, for one, doesn't let you do that. You can't even get into most of their library buildings without an ID.
      - bugsy 16y ago
        Can you name some academic libraries that offer free membership cards to the general public that enable web access to journals? I've never heard of this, and the institutions I am personally familiar with certainly don't allow this. At the closest three universities to where I am now, a library card for the public costs $500-$1000 a year. This was also the case in other cities I have lived in. If there are research libraries for which this is not the case I would love to know about them. Obviously from your post you have found some, so if you would name them it would help others.

by elvirs 16y ago

wvoq 16y ago

A data point: I have actually tried this. As a student at No Name State, I often found myself travelling to nearby Prestigious Research University for books and journals which weren't in circulation at NNS. PRU only had reciprocity agreements with other PRUs, so I couldn't ILL materials or check them out in person with my NNS card. Indeed, without a PRU ID I couldn't even enter the library except at certain designated hours, for reasons that had no discernible relation to crowding or public safety. PRU did offer a private membership, but its annual circulation fee was in the hundreds of dollars. It was 2008, and one of the richest universities in the country wanted to charge a student--who was already enrolled in NNS down the street, hardly any kind of flight risk--the equivalent of 20 hours of labor for the privilege of reading books. Now PRU has one of the worst academic cultures I've ever experienced or heard of, and I would be glad to learn that the state of public access to academic libraries is not so dire in general. It remains, though, that it is not always so trivially easy to do academic work at university libraries, even if you're already in "the academy".

bigfudge 16y ago
I'm curious, why not name names? Are PRU's librarians that evil?

mechanical_fish 16y ago

If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries Warning: Pet peeve alert. Scientists routinely complain that the public unfairly brands them as isolated ivory-tower eggheads whose work is too insular and rarefied to have any relevance to the real world. They also complain that the general public has a poor idea of how science actually works: People often view it as some kind of alternative religion in which the priests stand in front of documentary cameras wearing white coats and handing down dogma. Then these scientists turn around and publish most of their actual writing and almost one hundred percent of their data, data-driven reasoning, and detailed experimental design in journals which are prohibitively expensive to read unless you're currently affiliated with a university. Which is, in turn, exorbitantly expensive, either in cash or in opportunity cost. Trying to understand science without reading the primary literature is like trying to understand jazz by reading the New York Times and watching the occasional Ken Burns documentary. Reviewers do write a lot about jazz, and they go on an on about how important and highbrow it all is, but if you haven't actually listened to a jazz piece for more than two minutes you're never going to get the point. Jazz is about the music. Science is about the detailed methods and the data and the literature.

elvirs 16y ago
you don't have to be a student or pay the university to use the library.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  You have obviously never been to Harvard, where in fact you do. (You can also work at Harvard and get a library card as a perk. I often contemplate this fact.) The good news is that MIT has a much more awesome library and you can, in fact, turn up in person at MIT as a civilian and read copies of Nature. Of course, you have to make the time to do that. The parking is tricky, so you'd best ride the train. Even in the Boston area I have yet to find a neighborhood library with a Nature subscription. If, in fact, you know where I can legally get access to, say, the Nature and Science journals without either paying hundreds of dollars a year or physically traveling to the local college library please, please paste the instructions here.
  - elvirs 16y ago
    ok this is what you do: you go to the library only once, get a membership card and a username/password for electronic use. and use that username/password to access electronic resources of that library from anywhere. i hope this helps. edit:grammar.
    - djacobs 16y ago
      Harvard, for one, doesn't let you do that. You can't even get into most of their library buildings without an ID.
    - bugsy 16y ago
      Can you name some academic libraries that offer free membership cards to the general public that enable web access to journals? I've never heard of this, and the institutions I am personally familiar with certainly don't allow this. At the closest three universities to where I am now, a library card for the public costs $500-$1000 a year. This was also the case in other cities I have lived in. If there are research libraries for which this is not the case I would love to know about them. Obviously from your post you have found some, so if you would name them it would help others.