[Sca-cooks] The Epulario / book-oids from poor microfilm files?

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Sun Aug 8 13:52:32 PDT 2010


The aspect is of course that the rare book libraries and archives are  
not going to re-open
their vaults and allow all those volumes to all be rescanned.
(Are we seeing these volumes turning up on Google Books?)

We are lucky that various institutions allowed them to be filmed the  
first time. Can one imagine Longleat allowing the 1500 Pynson to be  
rescanned and put up online for free? Their new edition is due out.  
They've spent decades on it. Folger and the Huntington require  
academic credentials and references in order to cross their doorways  
and look at their materials. They have no incentive in making their  
materials freely available. Folger is selling a limited edition of one  
of their Commonplace Books right now for $750.00. Place it online for  
free; surely you are joking. The question is who pays for the bricks  
mortar and staffing if everything is online.

The microfilm project began in the 1930's and they are still  
microfilming or scanning volumes based on Pollard and Redgrave. The  
Wing materials from 1640-1700 were begun later.

And in 2010 they have not completed adding everything listed in the  
ESTC for the relevant dates. In July 2010 they just
announced "4,600 items from the Tract Supplement collection" have just  
been added.

Maybe this collection or project isn't for you or meet your needs but
For all those who have cursed and lamented and screamed that they  
don't have EEBO or access to the microfilms, well here's another  
option folks. Spending $14.00 to buy the Epulario makes it so, so  
easy! No trips to distant special collections to use facilities that  
are only open between 9 and 3 by appt, no dropping dimes or quarters,  
no fiddling with microfilms and those printers, no having to give up a  
machine after 15 minutes, etc. With EEBO No waiting for a download or  
trying to get it to print off at home or all the other problems that  
happen like it times out and then it times out again and then it  
doesn't come back up.

Get on Amazon -- Spend the money and it arrives in a couple days.
Easy!

Johnnae



On Aug 8, 2010, at 4:17 PM, emilio szabo wrote:
> Thanks for pointing to this new marketing idea (selling printouts
> of PDFs made from "ancient" microfilms, if I am not mistaken).snipped
> Rather, the "way to go" should be: to produce new,
> up to date images and to provide "open access" for these images.
> High resolution/color for use on the screen.
> B/W versions for the more common ink and laser printers of this world.
>
> An up to date imagefile contains, among other things, metadata, a
> color scheme and a size scale. Which would help Eduardo with his
> question about the size of "Epulario", 1598.
>
> Am I missing some aspects here?
> E.


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