---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:49:13 -0500
From: David Goodman <dgoodman@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU>
Reply-To: "SEREDIT:  SERIALST Editors" <SEREDIT@LIST.UVM.EDU>
To: SEREDIT@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: Microfiche Subscriptions (Naomi Young)

1. From the point of view of 90 or 95% of the readers, nothing is lacking.

2. But from a bibliographic point of view, books and journals have a
"feel."  To pick an example from my field there's a great difference
between using a 19th century edition of Darwin and using a modern reprint.
There isn't any to the biology student learning evolution.
But there is to the person trying to get a feel for the period.
For the early years of Science, say, examining the relatively flimsy
production values of the original gives me a feeling for what its place in
the world was then. In the opposite direction, the careful binding and the
fine paper of the early Phil Trans are different from JStor.
Further, in a library with the originals the effect of a collection is
there. I  recently visited the library of the British
Natural History Museum, and realized that  in the room I was standing
were the physical productions of all the learned societies in the world
gave a wonderful sense of the universality of the scientific enterprise.

3. There are some differences in the illustrations. The rendition of the
woodcuts in Phil Trans is not as sharp as the original. If one wished to
know exactly what the workers in the 18th century were able to resolve
with their microscopes, I would not consider it accurate to judge from a
reproduction. (I have only spot checked, and have not examined later
material.)

4. It seems a little odd that someone in the sciences is saying this.
I have no doubt that those in the humanities must feel this all
the more strongly, and could undoubtedly word it better.

But for general use I agree with you. Personally, if I need to find
something in Science or Phil Trans, I use the online version for
convenience, even though the originals
are relatively easily accessible. And almost no library--including
mine--can give the sense of completeness I described above in more than a
few fields.
At Princeton  the major journals in
humanities and social sciences on J Stor are each used  hundreds of
times a month--undoubtedly more than the print, though we cannot
currently measure it. And there are journals in J-Stor for which we do not
have complete runs in print, or where the print has been used so heavily
as to be in poor condition.

 David Goodman, Princeton University Biology Library
dgoodman@princeton.edu            609-258-3235

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 15:12:28 -0500
> From: Naomi Young <naomi@SMATHERSNT2.UFLIB.UFL.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Microfiche Subscriptions (David Goodman)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 20:31:58 -0500
> > From: David Goodman <dgoodman@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: Microfiche Subscriptions (Joyce Radcliff)
> >
> > No research university library should weed J-stor titles as a
> > matter of
> > course; the original format of most of them remains of
> > importance for many
> > kinds of scholarship. If the library has adequate remote storage
> > facilities, this may sometimes be a reasonable option for many of the
> > titles.
> >
> David,
>
> I've often praised JSTOR precisely *because* its cover-to-cover images,
> including color art and advertisements, provide such a precise replica of
> the original format; could you explain what is lacking, in your estimation?
>
> Not picking a fight, genuinely curious,
>
> Naomi
>
> Naomi Kietzke Young ** Head, Serials Cataloging
> Resource Services, University of Florida
> PO Box 117007 Gainesville, FL 32611-7007
> Phone: (352) 392-0355 ext. 234 ** Fax: (352) 392-7365
> naomi@mail.uflib.ufl.edu
>