Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
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Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#12He is attending the wrong library. Library Genesis is the way, now. And Library Sci-Hub.
And I am only half-kidding.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#13Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
I guess you should take into account that you are not (one of) the most preeminent computer scientists in the world, right?
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#14> P. S. Im sending copies of this letter to several friends who are interested in journal publishing but are not members of our board. But this is not an "open letter"; I would prefer not to have my remarks circulated widely. I'm emphatically not a revolutionary. I just want our journal to do the right thing. :/ EDIT: as others have pointed out the letter is now hosted publicly by Knuth himself.
This was his thinking in 2003. Nowadays he is publishing this in his own website at Stanford (https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth)
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#15Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
I guess you should take into account that you are not (one of) the most preeminent computer scientists in the world, right?
Do you listen longer when your best dairy cow moos?
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#16Sending a working person a 14 page letter about anything expecting them to read it is wild to me. Perhaps it's the quality of my writing but my personal experience is that even being way more concise, most people wouldn't care.
I guess you should take into account that you are not (one of) the most preeminent computer scientists in the world, right?
If Don Knuth sent me a 14-page letter, you bet I'm gonna read it. I might frame it.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#17Not a rhetorical question. Are they more affordable now in 2024 ? How much does the existence of open access journals affect the affordability overall ?
It's hard to compare as the business model has changed, I believe that nowadays it's basically impossible for a library to get an individual subscription to a individual journal: subscriptions are bundled and (online) subscriptions are sold institution wide with contracts running in the millions. That's very different from what Kunth is describing, where individual libraries choosing what subscriptions they need (eg we need the JoA in our (physical) collection so we buy a subscription to that).
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#18> P. S. Im sending copies of this letter to several friends who are interested in journal publishing but are not members of our board. But this is not an "open letter"; I would prefer not to have my remarks circulated widely. I'm emphatically not a revolutionary. I just want our journal to do the right thing. :/ EDIT: as others have pointed out the letter is now hosted publicly by Knuth himself.
This was his thinking in 2003. Nowadays he is publishing this in his own website at Stanford ( https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth )
I think GP is pointing out Knuth did not want this letter to become public knowledge, yet here we all are reading it.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was his thinking in 2003. Nowadays he is publishing this in his own website at Stanford ( https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth )
I think GP is pointing out Knuth did not want this letter to become public knowledge, yet here we all are reading it.
We're reading it from Knuth's website, where he shared it.
Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]
#20Not a rhetorical question. Are they more affordable now in 2024 ? How much does the existence of open access journals affect the affordability overall ?
No, the price of ebooks is insane and getting worse. Libraries are somewhat of a captive market for publishers and they set insane costs & limit the number of times an ebook can be checked out before the library has to buy it again. IMO the cost of electronic materials to libraries is one of the biggest issues in our society that no one talks or knows about.