SOUTH-AFRICA-L Archives

Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 2000-07 > 0962454915


From: Rod Neep <>
Subject: Re: Availability of Out of Print Books and Family Histories
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 13:35:15 +0100
References: <20000630173857.12218.qmail@web4105.mail.yahoo.com><004301bfe30d$00f80f00$db564d0c@9avfu>
In-Reply-To: <004301bfe30d$00f80f00$db564d0c@9avfu>


In article <004301bfe30d$00f80f00$>, APRIL BLAKELY
<> writes
>
>I could have a web site up and running within a month and provide two
>options for services: CD mailed to the purchaser or downloadable files. I'm
>also willing to provide instant fee payment services on the internet if the
>project supports this. I'll keep the cost of the service as low as possible
>and those that want it would have instant copies. Of course, those who can
>accept downloadable files save substantially over CD's that have to be
>mailed.

There is a big flaw in this April... to send the scanned files of a book
over the net would take *days* to transmit each book.

Look at it this way... each scanned page is between 250Kb and 500Kb in
file size. Let's consider the *small* files... In reality, it takes 6
minutes to transmit 4 pages of 250Mb each. 1.5 minutes per page. Still
not much. Now.... take just one book of 1,300 pages. That's 1,950
minutes on the phone. 32.5 hours!

32.5 hours for you to send... and 32.5 hours on the phone for someone to
receive it! - one book.

Naah! ;-) It goes on CD!

>I have the experience and an available web site, professional quality
>scanner, CD writer, time, etc. to run such a project. My only drawback is
>that I'm in the United States and not SA which makes access to texts more
>difficult.

As I said in another message. I would be happy to help someone set up
such a project for South Africa, and show them the "tricks" of creating
virtual books (a simple loose collection of scanned images is no use at
all)... but I'll qualify my offer. I would be happy to show someone in
South Africa how to do it with South African books.... as long as it was
a project to help others (like my Archive CD Project) and not a
commercial project.

Otherwise, I would still be happy to do it here as part of my project.

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


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