I've been absent from this discussion so far, due to a lot of other
pressing stuff like flu and mailing American Conchologist and conventions.
And a COA annual report that is not writing itself. But...well, it has been
occupying my mind, has done so for some time before the current thread.
When work began in early 1996 on the COA website, the Conch-Net, one of the
features we were most desirous of putting online was a series of good
articles from American Conchologist. Some voiced the concern that this
would cut down on memberships. It hasn't happened. We did put these
articles up, and for a year or so we kept up with that project. There is a
lot now on that section. Even though we were putting up articles within a
month or so of their appearing in print, at no time have we noticed a
reduction in memberships as a result. People who want the magazine want
the magazine. (Which, by the way, costs every penny of the membership
buck. No dues go to pay for Conch-L, which is free to COA, and thus to you
all, through the generosity of the University of Georgia. Other activities
like Grants to Malacology and operating costs are funded by conventions,
auctions, etc.)
Our intent is to make this information available to all who want to know
more about shells, not just COA members. It's one of COA's missions.
(Thus Conch-L as well.) And when someone writes to us for reprints or
information on an article that is posted there, we can send them to the
Conch-Net to read or reprint it for themselves. (We'd do more articles,
but keeping up with the project is tough. We are shorthanded in that
respect.)
When we designed the Conch-Net website, Conch-L list manager Amy Edwards
created an original and lovely series of shell portraits to use as icons
and section symbols. At the time, we asked her how she would feel if they
were pirated. She was quite sanguine about it, almost expected it. And
these images have indeed been lifted, again and again. I hope she feels as
flattered as I do when I happen upon them on the web. Dr. Gary Rosenberg
also put up the entire text of his Encyclopedia of Seashells on the
Conch-Net.
The Jacksonville Shell Club is an organization that regularly republishes
the articles from its excellent newsletter on its equally excellent
website. Yet if I were to break down my resolve and start joining all our
great shell clubs, Jacksonville would likely be my first. Why? I can get
it all online except the meetings? Well, because of that excellence which
its editor Bill Frank brings to the two publications.
True, if you are trying to make your living at it, you are going to have a
tough time eating solely on the proceeds of published scholarship, or shell
books, which may not be the same thing at all. (Tucker made a go of it but
he really sold himself as a product, became a star, you know?) Or on the
proceeds of editing (and writing a lot of) the periodicals a sheller reads.
Take my salary, for instance! Go ahead...it's not much use to me. Or take
Wes Thorsson's -- I'm sure he'd hand it over in a flash! But Wes is right.
We don't do it for that. (By the way, Wes, our source of workers is
indeed wide, but it is very thin on the ground. There's something to be
said for local too.)
It could come to pass that people will grow out of the paper habit, grow
out of the satisfaction they feel in owning a new book or piece of
periodical literature, opening crisp pages for the first time, discovering
new delights of scholarship, language or illustration. Scrolls have been
passe for a while now, and yet I don't think there are many bibliophiles
who would not like to own scrolls. Graven tablets ditto. Cuneiform ditto.
And who gets really attached to the physical presence of an audio tape of
a book? T'aint the same. A talking book doesn't even read the same. It
brings a voice with it instead of the voice in your head. TV, they said,
would replace books. Maybe it has for some, but those people probably
would never have been readers anyway. The mobs in bookstores are witnesses
to the continuing popularity of paper books.
Things are going to change. No doubt about it. They are always in flux
anyway. Question is, how are we going to use those changes and adapt them
to our hobby? I think we are doing a super job of it so far. Information
is our meat, and look at how much is already out there in the just about
four years since the first real shell sites went up.
OCR scanning and image scanning will hurt some of us. So we need to be
sensitive to that possibility of hurt to others. And we REALLY should all
be more diligent in acknowledging what we use.
As Wes noted, American Conchologist, like our beloved Hawaiian Shell News,
welcomes republication. But it would be good, when we see that
republication, if we were to note that the author of the piece was
acknowledged, as well as the place it was first published. It would be
good, when we see Amy's shell art work out there while we are surfing, to
see that Amy and the Conch-Net are credited with the art. As so many new
people flood onto the web in the ever increasing wave, there will be more
and more pirating, either intentional or in ignorance. It seems to me it
is sort of our responsibilities who have been here a while to show them the
way as best we can and as far as they will let us.
But if we are to nail all this down, what's whose and how it can be used
and so on, we will also lose all the best things about the Internet...its
informality, its accessibility, its power to let two people anywhere meet
on a fairly level ground, its relative cheapness and immense versatility --
it's whole Wonderland quality. Buttoning everything down tight will call
for a tradeoff. Will it be worth the cost? I just don't think so. But I
do think our unparallelled freedom of the past few years can't last. It
doesn't seem to be in the nature of human beings or lawyers to let any good
thing alone.
Oh, let me add: online images are no time soon going to replace the
printed page for images. Some of us will always like to see things
clearly. Digital imaging has made the printed image so clear and crisp
that looking at a shell is akin to holding it. About the only things you
can't sense are the weight, the temperature and the smell. Not so on a
computer. And these backlighted screens so far make it virtually
impossible to compare colors with any accuracy. I've had a few lessons in
that lately while working on cover colors! Whew!
Lynn Scheu
[log in to unmask]
Louisville KY, Home of the... etc...
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