You say tomato...
It's peculiar how the world is changing. The digital bandwagon seems to be overtaking us faster than we can run away from it. Over at work, we are all hellbent now on digitizing a major section of our collection. Space is needed for research and the Library has to give up a whole lotta square footage. Of course, we had proposed digitizing material en mass a few years ago...
Now that researchers are used to getting their stuff in PDF, they want everything in PDF. Books, journals, old reports, new reports, cafeteria menus, you name it, it's now distributed in PDF format. Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking the whole digital library movement. There are a lot of things going for it. At the same time, some people seem to think that once in a digital format, the item is permanent. Or they simply don't care.
Meanwhile, us Librarians and Archivist types are trying to figure out how to preserve a bunch of magnetic particles for posterity. One idea is to print a master copy and store it. For the moment, it's a matter of creating three versions of a file: uncompressed TIFF images; PDF A/1a; PDF with OCR. That PDF A/1a thing is a supposedly archival quality document that contains all the data needed for reproduction, irregardless of whether or not your computer holds the correct fonts or other material to reproduce the file. We hope.
What does this have to do with tools and ephemera? Seems I am now receiving notes from people asking when and if PDF versions of books will be available, along with the much delayed Moxon reprint as a Print On Demand offering. Check out Ebay and you can see an onrush of vendors selling all kinds of stuff in PDF format on CD. My suspicion is that, much like the Stock Market, there will be a rush to cash in on the supposedly easy money, followed by a rush to close shop as people discover just how much work is involved in creating a decent PDF, followed by the creation of the new Black Hole DVD format, which will work from the heat cast off by dormitory hot-plates.
POD. PDF. And I really don't like tomatoes all that much either. After a year of upheaval and change in our lives, we at the Roberts Residence are working on getting back to what passes for normal in middle age. Not Middle Ages, middle age. The Chronicle project is nearing completion, which will allow time once again to get on the POD, or PDF bandwagon. I may run a survey and set up a bell curve to assess what people want. Hard copy or PDF. Or just sit here scratching my head for a while procrastinating...err... deciding on which way to go. Or to go both ways. Not that I am making any judgements upon gender preferences.
Till next, Gary
