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

emilio szabo emilio_szabo at yahoo.it
Sun Aug 8 16:09:00 PDT 2010


Here are some more thoughts.


<< 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. >>

Why shouldn't they? Librarians are rational people who can see the 
difference between a microfilm from, say, the 1950ies and a high quality
digital version. Again: important libraries (re-)open their vaults for digital
programs all over the world.


<< (Are we seeing these volumes turning up on Google Books?) >>


This is a question of detail. Yes, many volumes do show up there.


If you want to have a color copy of the 1598 Epulario, go to the ebooks on 
demand service
of the Bavarian State library. If you order the book by this service, you will 
have 

to pay something like 40 Euros, then the book will be online for the rest of the 

world as well.


<< surely you are joking. >>

No, I was not joking.


<< The question is who pays >>

There are a lot of public, governmental etc. programs all over the word to pay 
for the digitisation of cultural heritage.

E.g.: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00028737/image_1

If you look at the images of the Anna Wecker cookbook 1598 you will find the 
note:

"Gefoerdert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" (this seems to be some 
sort of national research council) on each page.

This agency pays for the possibility that you and me can read and work with an 
online copy of the Anna Wecker's cookbook. (Yes, I know there is a printed 
facsimile. "I own it", I may say in this case.)

Libraries like the Wellcome Library, the French National Library, many libraries 
in the US, the UK, Portugal, Italy, etc. etc. see it as a part of their new 
mission to make their holdings widely available.

<< the most lousiest >>

This was not grammatically correct. It seems to me, that I was under the 
impression of the microfilm.


E.


      


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