> -----Original Message----- > From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description > and Access [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Tribby > Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 3:01 PM > To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA > Subject: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Library of Congress response to LCWG > > >Am 21 Jul 2008 um 11:37 hat Laurence S. Creider geschrieben: > > scroll to codex was lost. That will not be in our > lifetimes, however. > > To which Armin Stephan replied: > >Really??? I don't know ... > > I don't know either, but given that I've been hearing about > the coming "paperless" office and world being just around the > corner since at least the mid-1970s (one of the few benefits > of advanced age...), I doubt that the cultural state of > paperlessness is imminent. Although you couldn't tell it by > most threads on Autocat or the RDA list, there are still > libraries that collect paper-based materials whether books or > serials, and for that matter there are still libraries that > use card catalogs, and no amount of yearning for tomorrow > today or fulminating about the glorious digital future will > change that overnight. Sure it might happen, but I highly > doubt it will be in my lifetime (not really saying much there > considering my age), or for that matter, Armin Stephan's life > either. Vinyl sound recordings are supposed to be dead, too, > yet audiophile recordings on vinyl are still being > created--dare I say because of perceived shortcomings in > digital sound reproduction?
This does remind me of a quote by Umberto Eco (I think) somewhere, where he was talking about the end of paper. He said that if you walk into any office, you can see clearly that it is not the end of paper since you see pieces of it flying everywhere, but it does seem to be the end of binding... To be fair, I think a lot of this comes from people who don't like to read off of a computer screen (myself included!) and print things off so that they can be read more comfortably. A genuine ebook reader does not seem to be that far away. I've heard good things, along with bad things, about the Kindel. Supposedly the Readius with the flexible screen that you can carry around in your pocket will be available this fall. http://www.polymervision.com/ Still expensive, but so were the first ipods. And I'm sure things will improve tremendously once there is a market. But being in Rome, where I am surrounded by the remains of a fabulous civilization where practically everything was lost (take a look at the Loeb Classical Library sometime. That is just about everything that survived from those days, and it is pitifully small), and I think about our current situation. In some ways, digital information is more robust than anything we have ever worked with because it can be copied flawlessly millions of times; it can be sent around the world in a split-second; it can be reformatted easily e.g. TIFF to PDF to JPEG or whatever (attended by well-known problems, but still much easier than reformatting from papyrus scroll to parchment). But digital is a highly delicate format in other ways. When I look at the ruins of the Palatine or the Forum, it can be frightening when you realize what could be lost in this relatively new format. James Weinheimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome via Pietro Roselli, 4 00153 Rome, Italy voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 327 fax-011 39 06 58330992
