Subject: Re: tc-list Open Access, Was: More on American Responsibilities

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 14:11:47 -0400

At 08:24 AM 9/19/99 -0400, you wrote:

>Free versus Open Access:
>
>The term "free" seems to be a hot button when discussing access to ancient
>manuscripts so I would suggest that we use the phrase "open access" instead. By
>"open access" I mean the availability of ancient manuscripts in a digital
or film
>replica providing the requester pays a reasonable fee for duplication,
postage and
>handling.

Ok- we are at one here.

>The key to resolving the "double standard" is in your statement is that
your are
>free to "sell my ideas and materials." The manuscripts in question are not
the ideas
>of any of their holders, they only own the manuscript as object and have no
claim to
>the intellectual content of the manuscript. As I noted before they can
certainly
>restrict access to the physical object as its "owner" but is that a
decision that
>hinders or promotes scholarship?

It promotes scholarship and hinders dilettantism for one simple reason--
people only value what they have to pay for.  And people only pay for
something they really value.  By "pricing" such objects one insures that
only those genuinely interested in them will bother with them.

But why should not everyone be free to "bother with them"?  Again, to put it
simply, not everyone is equally qualified to know enough in order to
properly assess and utilize materials.

To be brief- those who have devoted their lives, education, and resources to
the study of a certain thing should make use of whatever resources they wish
to; those who are mere dabblers should not.  Elitist?  Absolutely.
Practical?  Again, absolutely.  Let the rest be sastisifed with the
distillations- because, frankly, they cant make use of the more important
resources anyway.

To put it perfectly bluntly- why should someone who cannot read Hebrew be
allowed to receive a film of Leningrad?  What can they possibly do with it?
Why should a person who cannot read Greek receive a film of P52 (or
whatever)?  And why should they have access to it?

Best,

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
email- [email-masked]
web page-  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest

---

From: Ian Hutchesson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 03:36:35 +0200

Warning, not a particularly nice letter.
----------------------------------------

Jim West responding to:

>>certainly restrict access to the physical object as its "owner" but is 
>>that a decision that hinders or promotes scholarship?

wrote:

>people only value what they have to pay for.  

This is *pure mindless stupidity*, Jim. It is only for those people, who
think the way you profess to, that your pronouncement is true. It is
anti-scholarly: it's not important where the information comes from or how
much it costs; all information that is pertanent is to be valued.

>And people only pay for
>something they really value.  

(And this is pretty incredible as well for you living in the home of
persuasive advertising. It's often only after you've forked out the cash
and seen the product close-up that you learn that it was not worth buying
-- after people raved to me about Morton Smith's book on Palestinian
Parties, I bought it only to find that it was an over-trusting rehashing of
undatable sources and as such worthless.)

>By "pricing" such objects one insures that

This of course does not cover the full story: by '"pricing" such objects
one insures that' many of 'those genuinely interested in them' *can't*
'bother with them'.

>properly assess and utilize materials.

Put documents in the hands of those who know what to do with them, like the
international team who sat on the scrolls for forty years causing so much
unintended damage that it would have been better to allow the information
out from the beginning and risk what the international team attempted to
save the documents from.

The logic you outline is merely a means of protecting the
institutionalisation of scholarship at the expense of scholarship itself. I
guess you mind that a patents clerk from Ulm stuck his nose into the field
of subatomic physics and developed some silly theory of relativity. What
about the nerve of the ex-air force navigator with an architectural
background who dared to claim to have deciphered Linear-B?

>Practical?  Again, absolutely.  

Oh, come off it, Jim. Easy? Yes. One doesn't have to think. Practival? Yes.
One doesn't have to think. Elitist? Not really: elitism I would think
guarantees quality -- just think of how much rubbish has made it into print
over the DSS.

One of the things about dabbling, Jim, is that there is more likelihood of
the lateral thought necessary to overcome the confines of current problems.

The linguist and educationalist in me asks if one who dabbles in numerous
languages can ever really become proficient in any. The answer is: probably
not. 

>Let the rest be sastisifed with the

If you're a serious scholar, it doesn't matter where the ideas and analyses
come from, just as long as they are valid and useful.

-----------------------

Thus far, I have been contrary to almost everything you have said.

If you had saved your breath a bit and written just the following
paragraph, I would have been much more content.

>whatever)?  And why should they have access to it?

Important materials should be available to those who can use them (which
make me remember, have the Wadi ed-Daliyeh texts been published yet?).

But naturally there are problems of locations and consequent costs of
travel. These are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, which may
some day be overcome when educational institutions eventually get onto the
information "revolution". When access to digital photo reproduction
seriously hits this business, then the film will end up in a museum itself
and there will be no need to worry about access at all.

Cheers,

Ian

(I would be interested to know if the rundown of the situation regarding
materials from Muenster as portrayed by Gary Dykes is actually
representative of the current state of affairs and not just an unfortunate
isolated occurrence or two.)