--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 13:21:26 -0400
From: Nat Case <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: commercial repackaging
Sender: Nat Case <[log in to unmask]>
>--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
>Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 13:28:40 -0700
>From: "Jones, Bill (MLIB)" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: RE: FW: USA NATIONAL ATLAS ONLINE <fwd>
>Sender: "Jones, Bill (MLIB)" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>While I appreciate your wanting us to understand that point of view, you are
>missing the
>most important part of the question really being asked? Should the
>taxpayers have to pay twice
>for federal or any other government information? I say NO public accessible
>library should pay for information, in any format, that has already been
>paid for in full.
>
>Bill Jones
>[log in to unmask]
I appreciate the philosophical basis of your sentiment, but taken at
face value, this eliminates virtually every commercially-produced map
in the USA. We all trace USGS bases, or use US base linework. There's
simply no reason to do otherwise.
Also: much government information is encoded in obscure formats,
difficult-to-get-apart databases (Our US Colleges and Universities
map used US Dept of Education data, which was a royal pain to extract
from its database), and limited-run, not-in-general-distribution
reports. I remember from my days at Princeton U Press, the story
about their first real best-seller, ATOMIC ENERGY FOR MILITARY
PURPOSES (or something like that), the official history of the
Manhattan Project. It was issued in a comparatively short run as a
mimeographed report, and Princeton reset it and issued it verbatim
as a trade book--it was on the NY Times Bestseller list for quite a
while, something they didn't achieve again until the 60s. Lots of
similar documents (Pentagon papers, Watergate, the Starr report) have
been similarly redistributed. Are you saying libraries should always
spend person-hours to track down original source materials like this,
instead of paying what is often modest amount for a commercially
re-packaged version?
The important thing, it seems to me, be that those government sources
of information be supplemented by, rather than replaced by,
commercial information. I mean supplemented in a general sense: a lot
of why the Delorme atlases and other enhanced USGS topographic
information are valuable is that they are packaged in a way that is
more easily accessible to the retail market, not just that they have
added content (in many cases, CD topos have little if any added
content). Government publications are often simply not designed or
priced to make sense in the retail market.
What I do have a problem with is (for example) the way West
Publishing's formatted books/databases of legal decisions are the
legal standard, AND are copyright. We need to guard against privately
copyrighted publications becoming the only available bases, or even
the standard public bases, for other publications. I've run into
several situations like this in those cases where state highway maps
are privately produced... suddenly this public document isn't public.
It's a complicated situation, and we have a set of governments whose
policies are often not even consistent with a given department. From
my point of view as a regular library user, librarians need to stay
informed about sources, and pursue a balanced and practical policy of
getting information from the sources that strike a balance between
efficient use of time and cost. I would be sorry if such a rigid
policy were widely enforced... for one thing, it would mean less
business for us!
Nat Case
Hedberg Maps
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