---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 08:47:55 -0500
From: "Pennington, Buddy" <buddy.pennington@ROCKHURST.EDU>
Subject: Re: Cost per title... (Albert Henderson)

But print has been around for ages and HTML (or better yet, XML) is very
new.  Historically a new technology does not eclipse the old until there is
a complete redundancy coupled with advantages the old technology cannot
compete with.  I believe that electronic journals offer advantages that the
print cannot compete with, but that it has not achieved the redundancy
(especially in the areas of long term storage) of features the print
versions provide.  That does means we should not be giving up print this
very minute, but I cannot see the viability of print journals in the long
term.

And why would electronic (let's not limit ourselves to HTML) journals not be
citable?  Since when does the format of content lend more or less
credibility to that content?

Buddy Pennington
Acquisitions/Serials Librarian
Rockhurst University Greenlease Library
buddy.pennington@rockhurst.edu
#816-501-4143

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 20:01:42 -0400
From: Albert Henderson <NobleStation@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Re: Cost per title... (Chris Brown-Syed)

on 25 Oct 2000 Chris Brown-Syed PhD <ad6509@WAYNE.EDU> wrote:

> Albert Henderson wrote:
> >
> > The nonsense comes in the assumption that you will
> > have software that reads the copies.
>
> As long as people stay wedded to proprietary s/w, I agree.
>
> However, that's why it's a good thing Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML - it's
> plain ASCII text and is a true "cross-platform" tool. Its older cousin,
> SGML, has been around in the printing trade for at least two decades.

As I understand Tim Beners-Lee, he would be the first
to point out that this technology is in its infancy,
primitive, and far from perfect. I don't recall him
addressing the archival needs of the academy. My
experience with HTML is that the print must be
compared with the source-text to identify common
output problems such as dropped lines and garbles.

For my money, I would much rather have a nicely
bound book, reliably produced with folios on both
sides of the page and citable, than the mess
produced by HTML. If one counts the time spent
producing this inferior product, it is not
cheaper than print.

Albert Henderson
Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<70244.1532@compuserve.com>