posted 09-21-2008 06:17 PM            

quote:

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....I see the big questions looking forward as the role of electronic/internet publishing versus traditional printed paper copies .....

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I could rant about this into a dissertation... what follows is an attempt to be brief... probably too brief and may be just a bunch of sound bites ....

For me challenges of electronic/internet publishing versus traditional printed paper is of great concern. Time has proven that print media is the most human friendly, portable, easily maintained, archived and has the longest shelf life. So far electronic media has not done a good job delivering on the promises to do the same or better. In fact during the short time we have been living with electronic media/info/data there are plenty of examples of info/data being lost forever. Unlike electronic media which requires power and/or hardware/software, printed media just requires the light of day to be utilized.

For many, electronic publishing is the new and exciting frontier. Everyone is anxiously moving traditional publishing towards electronic media. Many things support this transition. Mostly economics and ever evolving ubiquitous electronic communications (Internet, Cellphone, etc). With no printing costs, lower distribution costs, more speed in publishing, expanded media extensions (animation, audio, video, etc), larger audience potential, etc, etc. ..... the allure is great.

I have been in Information Technology Management since the late 1960's, in the trenches with the personal computer revolution, and have worked professionally in the first video tape generation of broadcast Television and Radio. I have seen standards come and go. I have seen the technology get better better and better. And as the older technologies are left behind, I have had to bare witness to the historical info (data) which only exists in those older technologies being forgotten or lost.

In Info Technology, I have seen time and time again fantastic electronic only historical archives be lost forever. Let me avoid the more complex and dramatic examples of historical records, like Vietnam era military records, that have been lost since the electronic computer age began. A more personal & simple example is the good intentions of June & me in doing our early research and cataloging all electronically. We would do our best to transition older electronic media into the newer media technologies. When time didn't permit... we made sure we had good back up copies. Much of this archived well protected media and the info/data stored on it will never be recovered because the equipment to retrieve the info is no longer in working order and replacements don't exist. Despite our best intentions to "get around to it" transitioning data to mew media, time gets away from you.

On the Internet, I have seen great repositories/sources of information just disappear. I have also seen the info morf into something altogether different from what it once was. The morphing in itself is not a bad thing, especially when the morphing is correcting misinformation. But losing the audit trail that printed media provides doesn't help history or future research.

The new electronic media is great for distributing news but not so great for maintaining historical archives. As the underlying technologies change often the data doesn't transition to the new technologies. Until there are electronic software and hardware standards for mandating accessibility to historical info/data the above will continue to be an bane to history.

posted 09-21-2008 08:30 PM            

• Without electronics in general, my small researches would never have begun; without the web, the results would have remained before my eyes alone.
  
• I have, here in my small corner of the west coast, little access to primary or even secondary research materials. Local museums do not embrace my interests or do not allow access without academic affiliation. The local university has seven books on silver in the stacks and two of those are by the Kovels; my local library buys no new reference material at all. I have not the means to travel, especially for an obsession without remuneration.
  
• There are no groups (still here in my acre) that meet to discuss or appreciate silver in the flesh. I know, if fact, exactly two other collectors within a 50 mile radius. This may, of course, just be a function of my convivial personality, but on the other hand, I am in daily contact, via email and the web, with hundreds.

posted 09-22-2008 09:16 AM            

Communication is always a good thing. Prompt, efficient communication and dissemination of information is what you are describing. It is the here and now of things and in that context I generally agree.

My concern is in forty years how much of the info will no longer be accessible or accessible unchanged as the originator intended?

In the ten years the SSF has been up it has been a constant struggle to keep it up, running and to maintain the early (now legacy) posts/images.

posted 09-22-2008 03:46 PM            

While I generally agree with you, my experience as the author of several books and numerous articles (alas, none of them on silver) is that e-publishing is inevitable. The cost of journals and magazines is becoming prohibitive and the problem of physical storage for even the largest libraries problematic. Some academic journals no longer even offer hard copies. Print newspapers also seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. I used to get the New York Times for the Crossword puzzle, the Week in Review, and the book review section. I know get it online and have no paper to recycle. My two latest books are available eletronically at the publisher's insistance.

The new e-readers, which are light, portable and backlit to prevent eye strain, are the wave of the future. Once we get used to the change, we will hardly notice it. Who yearns for typewriters?!

posted 09-22-2008 04:56 PM            

Without data standards for preserving, archiving and most importantly propagating the data, then it is likely that your recently published ebook won't be readable with future ebook readers.

How many of us still have 5.25 inch floppies? Yet todays new computers generally don't come with a 5.25 inch floppy drive. We are about to see the end of the 3.5 floppy as more & more computers don't even have a 3.5 inch floppy but only a CD/DVD.

Heck, I still have data on 8 inch floppies and 10 inch Bernoulli carts. And there's no hope if you have legacy data on punch cards....

I am all for the new medias and the associated technologies. My concern is that the future of todays data is being overlooked.

Books/printed media live on for hundreds of years.. technology standards can change in just a year or two and then quickly become obsolete.

posted 09-22-2008 05:01 PM            

No, no Betamax films, but all my favorite VHS are being rapidly converted to DVD. Data storage and retrieval standards and protocols are a huge issue, but I expect them to be solved. I do hard copies of my books as well.

Here is a more pressing issue for historians. My generation wrote stacks of letters. Now, everyone writes e-mails, which will certainly not survive. Hence the loss of an invaluable source for future historians.

posted 09-22-2008 06:08 PM            

Some stuff will be lost. Some stuff will be saved by being copied onto new storage material.

Meanwhile, the crappy paper they printed my first little book on two years ago is already yellowing. I doubt it will outlive me. My best hope of immortality is to become so popular I never go out of print (ha!!!!) or to get distributed electronically--which has its own dangers, such as piracy, which will eventually mean that I can't make a living and will have to sell off my collection of dented coin silver teaspoons to feed the parakeet.