SO WHAT IF YOUR WORK IS PUBLISHED?

Before you begin, you need to read THIS ARTICLE. You should read it along mine as I progress through the points. This is the longest of my articles yet, over 2,300 words. It's 7am now, I started on this a little after 12. I hate this guy.

True enough, not everything in existence can be found on the internet, then again. Not everything in existence can be found in a single library. The largest library in the world is nothing in comparison to the internet. The internet has only about 8% of all the journals in the world (I would like to know how he managed to come to this conclusion), but how many does a library have?

“If you want the Journal of Biochemistry, Physics Today, Journal of American History, you’ll pay, and to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Nothing in the world is free, journals in libraries aren’t free, libraries cost people millions of dollars through taxes to build and libraries aren’t maintained by robots. Paying for the journal on the internet gives you INSTANT access to the material without leaving your seat. If you want quality and quick service, pay for it.

Granted, searching for something on the internet is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. However, doesn’t this happen in any case?

The bigger a library grows; doesn’t that also mean that there is more to search through?

Simple, the more the data there is, the harder the search. Take for example, if every single book/article/journal in existence was put it into a library, it would be difficult to find things through the library because so much more data is available.

Secondly, compare the time it would take someone to find relevant data to their research on the internet to how long it would take someone using a library.

Through the internet you would have to turn on the computer, connect to the internet, load up the search engine, think of search methods then siphon through the hundreds of results (If the person was skilled at using search engines, this would cut down to possibly tens)

Through a library, you would first have to be physically IN a library. Hardly anyone lives next to a library, so transport to the library would take some time. Next, you would have to use the library’s computer to search for the data you require. Assuming the journal/book/newspaper hasn’t been checked out yet, you would then have to get off the seat and search through the library for it.

In the time it takes for someone to travel to the library, someone just moderately skilled at searching would probably have been able to find the source, print it out and make some coffee, and then maybe some toast.

Agreed, quality control doesn’t exist. The internet has made information broadcasting a million times easier and “any fool can put anything on the web”

Then again, who has the right to call these people “fools” Einstein was regarded as an idiot when he was young, if the internet was available to him when he was young and he posted something on the internet, would that mean he was a fool because he did not have a PhD?

Though many things on the internet may be utter rubbish, opinions and research done by people who aren’t famous should NOT in any way be disregarded. Though research or opinions given by “Professors” are credible, they should not be regarded as law. They CAN still be proven wrong.

Nevertheless, I still agree that quality control does not exist. This is why professional search engines are available to researchers (these search engines search for published work such as journals etc.) There is no comparison to what is available to these search engines than to what is available to a library.

Finally a decent point. These search engines only show a segment of the article/journal and usually charge money just to view the article/journal and the rest of the data on the article/journal might be irrelevant. Data may be missing, graphs etc. may not turn out the way you expected it to.

Solution: Use a better search engine/better service. If an internet service can’t even properly digitize journals, don’t use it. Use something else; it’s only a click away. Journals don’t even need to be digitalized anymore, many companies are releasing their publications on paper along with their digitalized versions so as the internet progresses these digital journals will soon be perfect.

In addition, these engines have a whole lot more journals available to them in comparison to a library. What you don’t know really does hurt you applies to libraries too. I think it’s safe to claim that no library in the entire world has all the journals in the world.

Decent point at best, “I would not trade access to digitized journals for anything in the world, but their use must be a judicious, planned, and measured one, not full, total, and exclusive reliance” saved him.

States Can Now Buy One Book and Distribute to Every Library on the Web—NOT!

If I had a penny every time I hear such an ignorant statement like this, Bill Gates’ wealth would be chump change in comparison to mine. Here are a few examples of people trying to predict advancement of technology.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Patent Office

This statement was given around the year 1900. I would search the internet to find out whether or not anything has been invented since the 1900s, but that would be pointless as the answer is obvious.

(I did search the internet and it seems in 1994 alone, 113, 268 patents were issued)

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft, 1981

This statement was given by the richest man in the world, Bill Gates just about 20 years ago. This was regarding how much RAM (Random access memory) will be more than enough for computers.

Currently, I have 512MB of RAM in my Toshiba laptop, which isn’t the top-in-line computer. In layman terms, the laptop in front of me has 800 times more memory than Bill Gates predicted would be enough for anybody.

“1.5 Million Academic titles have been published since the 1970 and fewer than a couple thousand are available on the internet” (I would like to see the evidence to this too). I could bravely state that there is no library in existence with all 1.5 million Academic Titles. I could also safely assume that a large library would have “fewer than a couple thousand” Academic titles too.

“Finally, vendors delivering e-books allow only one digitized copy per library. If you check out an e-book over the Web, I can’t have it until you return it. Go figure, as they say.”

It’s blatantly obvious which is more convenient. This applies for returning books too, just get online, and in a matter of minutes, you could return the book with a click.

Finally, fines are imposed so that books are returned on time so the resource would be available to someone else. So dog-ate-my-homework argument or not, the offender should be punished.

Credit is given where credit is due. There is no doubt that reading something from a monitor would definitely cause more eyestrain than reading it from a book.

Solution – Print it out. However, if everybody prints every single book they wish to read, that would (by far) require enormous quantities of paper and would probably deforest the entire earth in less than a decade.

The reason why there isn’t any library-less Universities now is simply because technology hasn’t advanced that far yet. It’s impossible for me to argue with this point because it’s fact; library-less Universities do not exist today.

However, adding to his endless amounts of ridiculous statements, “In other words, a fully virtualized library just can’t be done. Not yet, not now, not in our lifetimes.” I’ve already stated my argument against statements that predict the future and this is yet another that proves his immense ignorance.

As mentioned earlier, human technology hasn’t advanced far enough to make digitizing cheap…yet. When computers were first made, they were humongous, weighed several tons and costs millions of dollars to manufacture. As technology advances, price decreases.

True, it is far too expensive to create a “virtual library” today, but it is very probable that more than a few virtual libraries will exist in less than a few years as the price of digitizing would definitely drop tremendously.

“The first Cray-1® system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million”

If I were to compare the supercomputer built in 1976 with the tiny laptop sitting in front of me, I would first have to give the supercomputer a lot of handicap. Take in consideration that my laptop is a whole lot faster, has more memory and requires much less electricity to operate.

If technology advances the same pace it did 30 years ago (it is actually quicker, technology advances exponentially) A medium sized library would theoretically cost $227,272 to digitize.

“Vendors offering magazine access routinely add a new year while dropping an earlier one.”

I would very much like to see the evidence for this statement as it sounds completely bogus. Take these facts into consideration and you may realise why.

*Boring facts and calculations are written at the bottom. The important points are stated here.

Though it is arguable that I did not calculate the cost of electricity, server maintenance etc. The cost of computer storage is insignificant compared to physical storage. If storing a magazine costs so little, what possible reason would drive a company to drop an earlier edition as a later one comes in?

“Finally, what do you do with rare and valuable primary sources once they are digitized? Take them to the dump?”

All libraries have limited space, fact. If a library continues to add books/journals/magazines to its collection continuously, it would inevitably fill up and there will be no choice but to either remove some or to expand.

“We have nearly 1,000 years of reading print in our bloodstream and that’s not likely to change in the next 75.”

Before motor vehicles were invented, we had easily over 2,000 years of using animals as a main form of transport. That changed in a 100 years, wrong again.

Either he owns a time machine to be able to make statements like these or he thinks he’s the next Nostradamus.

75 years ago, men would never have been able to imagine success of computers nor foresee it. 75 years ago, men could only read books on paper and could never imagine otherwise. Just like how it was before, how can we foresee the creation of a revolutionary advancement that completely replaces paper? Just because we can’t foresee it, doesn’t mean it is impossible.

To his defence, libraries exist today because it is still needed in society. Technology has not advanced far enough to completely replace libraries and it will possibly remain that way for years to come. “It’s a woefully poor substitute for a full-service library”

However, it is ignorant to think that the internet will never replace libraries in the future. It’s just as intelligent as a caveman thinking that cave paintings will forever be only way information will be passed down generations.

Using a computer requires knowledge in using a computer, just like a search engine. The more experience/skill someone has in using a search engine, the better and quicker it is to find relevant sources. Moderate skill would be more than enough for me to guarantee that finding sources off the internet would be quicker than a library.

I just spent over 6 hours criticizing his published work, and now I feel like I have just completely wasted my time. Debating with an incoherently drunk person would’ve been more challenging.

Information is stored on storage media and storage media costs less than a shelf. A magazine would consist mainly of text; a single character of text consists of one byte. I could fairly assume a magazine would have about 20,000 words, heck I’ll be generous and give it 100,000 words. Giving each word an average of 4 characters, that totals to a 400,000 characters a magazine (Approximately 0.4megabytes)

In my laptop alone, I have over 40 gigabytes (One gigabyte is 1000 megabytes). In theory, I could store over 2500 magazines in my computer.

The stated facts are probably meaningless to a computer illiterate, so I will roughly convert it to cost-per-magazine.

A consumer hard-disk with 160GB costs $153. A magazine takes up 0.0004GB of memory.

The cost of storing ONE magazine in a consumer hard disk (Commercial storage media is cheaper) would cost about 0.4 CENTS.

A 160GB hard disk could theoretically store at least 10,000 magazines containing 100,000 words each. Try fitting that on your lap