Librarian Dowlin's downfall and role of a passive commission

[Isobel Stark]

On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Marc Salomon wrote:

> 
> from:
> 
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=1997&month=01&day=29&article=EDITORIAL12418.dtl
> 
> Wednesday, Jan. 29, 1997 7 Page A 12
> 
> © 1997 San Francisco Examiner
> (even though I wrote one of these letters and didn't sign away my copyright
> .go figure...does the ex just assume copyright or what?)

Look, I don't want to get into a copyright argument, but how about
bandwidth and just useless repetition?

Surely it is 'friendlier' to give the url and a quick description of
what's there in your email?  Certainly that seems to be the standard
practice on the mailbase-based library lists which I'm on.  Then those who
want to read the items go off and get their own copy (which might even be
cached locally at their own site if another member of their institution
has already looked at it).

Long emails of the type that you have sent out are also unfair to those
members of this list on slow modem links, and if a member of this list
doesn't have web access (which is unlikely given the list!) surely they
could contact the sender of the mail for more information on the item?

So please, please, can we have an end to repeating wholesale items which
are already freely available electronically elsewhere?

Apologies for prolonging this thread.

Isobel

====================================================================
Isobel Stark,
Web Officer,
UKOLN,
c/o Library, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY

tel: +44 (0) 1225 323343            fax: +44 (0) 1225 826838

email: i.a.stark at ukoln.ac.uk        url: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/~lisias/