SOUTH-AFRICA-L Archives

Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 2000-07 > 0962453683


From: Rod Neep <>
Subject: Re: Out of Print Books
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 13:14:43 +0100
References: <006501bfe30e$883fe7c0$db564d0c@9avfu>
In-Reply-To: <006501bfe30e$883fe7c0$db564d0c@9avfu>


In article <006501bfe30e$883fe7c0$>, APRIL BLAKELY
<> writes
>Before anyone jumps on me about the following, I though I would add a
>comment...
>
>I by no means want to compete with Rod Neep's site or infringe on his work.
>But after visiting it, I have the impression he focuses on UK and that time
>is the biggest issue in providing books.

I do indeed... but only because I live here and therefore the books are
more easily available.

>It seems logical to have a site
>devoted to SA where we can make available a lot of books quickly.

It doesn't really matter in the world where it is, that's the beauty of
the net. However, if someone is really keen to do it "locally" then
fine. I will help as much as possible .... but... big but!....
I will only do that if it is a non-commercial setup which will charge
less than RAND 120.00 for a CD, and provide good value.

The whole idea of my Archive CD Project is to *help* researchers by
making the old books available, not to make commercial profits. For
example, here in the UK the is a company selling a CD of one book of a
series for UKP 29.95 .... there are 16 volumes in the series, and
believe me, if you wanted one, you would want them all. What I do is put
4 or 5 volumes on one CD (because they will fit on) and charge 10.89.

Another example... an 1830 county directory... UKP 19.95
where I produce 3 or 4 of them for different counties on one CD at 10.89
PLUS... the fact that I recreate them into "virtual books" so that one
can use contents and indexes... point and click on a name, and you go to
the relevant page.... not just a loose collection of scanned images on a
CD.

SO... if someone can persuade me that they want to do a similar separate
project for SA but *not* as a commercial venture, then I will help them
set it up (I warn you, there is a *lot* of work!)... otherwise I would
be more than happy to include SA books as part of my Archive CD Project,
as the location of being here in the UK doesn't matter at all... I
already have folks loan and send me books from the USA and Australia,
and most CD sales go there and to SA anyway ;-)

>Plus the
>downloadable files would be a plus to those who have the ability to receive
>them.

Unfortunately putting them on the net doesn't work... otherwise I would
- for free! Scans of an average 500 page book takes up several hundred
megabytes of data. To download that much data, even with a fast 56K
modem... takes many hours... well... *days* actually! It would be much
less if the books were re-typed and on the net as text files, but that
destroys the advantage of seeing the original book, and relegates it
from being a *primary* source of data to a secondary source... complete
with errors. OCR of those old books just doesn't work accurately at all.
It would be easier to re-type the book! Honest ;-) Tried it.

Best regards
Rod
--
Rod Neep
E-Mail:
(alternative: )
Reproductions of old books, etc. on CD : http://www.fweb.org.uk/pub


This thread: