Re: Challenges page update...

[reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Reeds)]

On Aug 10, 13:09, Nick Pelling wrote:

.....
> IMO, the biggest challenge of all would seem to be in finding a way to 
> convince Yale to publish good quality digital watermarked colour images on 
> a CD-ROM.
> 
> What happened when people have tried to open a dialogue with them about 
> this in the past? What particular issues were Yale concerned about?

I'm afraid my answer is a bit wordy.

I spent a lot of time on the phone talking with the Beinecke
library about 18 months ago.  Of course they might have changed
their policies since then, but at the time it seemed that the
library's position was this:  they were perfectly willing to
allow photography & publication of the VMS, with these three
provisos:  (1) the MS could not be put at risk or damaged,
(2) the publication could not embarass Yale, and (3), the
customer could not own any way have exclusive rights to 
the images.

In practice (1) boils down to: the work must be done by the
Beinecke Library's Photography department, or by an  imaging
firm with close contractual ties with the Beinecke Library,
with technical expertise in handling rare books, and (2) they
won't take pictures for neo Nazis.  Point (3) is the interesting
one.  The images, if published in a coffee table book, could
not be copyright by the publisher.  This undercuts the usual
publisher's business model, but is otherwise tremendously helpful 
for scholars in general, including us.  (Once the photos have
been taken, my understanding is that Yale doesn't really care
how they are published, always assuming (2) is obeyed.)  In
practical terms, I think this would be enforced by Yale retaining
the negatives or copies of the digital master image, which they
could copy or sell as they saw fit.

The reason we didn't get copies made about 18 months ago is that
their digital scanner, although once the world's best, had become
woefully obsolete, and not capable of doing the job properly,
with the resolution and quality conrols we wanted, at the price
we could afford.  A side issue, relative to (1) above, is that
their equipment used hot bright lights, which in fact would
damage the MS to a certain extent.  So between shots the MS
would have to be allowed a certain cooling-off time, making
the whole operation slower and more labor intensive.

The alternative plan, suggested by Yale, was to get the job done
by a certain scanning firm, specialists in rare book & art object
scanning, with which the library has a special relationship. Jim
Gillogly and I visited the boss of this firm about a year ago, and
I think he wants to do the project and I think Jim agrees with me
that they are technically capable. Their price is a bit higher
than Yale wanted, but not impossibly so. (There have been so many
offers by list members to help pay for a proper scan that I have no
doubt we can pay for the job.) The firm promised to make a formal
cost estimate, at which point we would decide exactly what set of
options to ask for, and then we would say "yes" and pass the hat
around.

So why hasn't the scan been done?  The firm did not want make
an estimate until their Yale branch office was up and running.
But this has been held up for the better part of a year by
(I think) inertia on the real-estate agents' part: office space
which had been promised the firm had been denied, or the equivalent.
I have spoken with the boss of the firm fairly recently, and
he is exploring an alternative location for the office.  I give
him a nagging phone call every few months to see how things 
stand.

So the bottom line summary is:  in principle, Yale has no
objection to us making exactly the sort of scan we hope to have,
but in practice, through no fault at all on the Beinecke's part,
and for completely uninteresting & extraneous practical reasons
the project has been delayed.

I don't mention the name of the firm because no formal offer has
yet been submitted, but I have kept a small bunch of VMS list
members informed about all details of these tedious negotiations.

I hope this helps.

Jim

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178