Responding to msg by [log in to unmask] (Eric Siegel) on >The Witt Library Posting is particularly interesting ... >[because] they are not announcing a gopher or Web site, >but ... are *selling* this information!!! The idea of the Witt Library selling its data is not very much different than that employed by other Getty projects. You have to buy the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) or the Union List of Artists' Names (ULAN) if you want to own the resource. If you want to use it for free, you always can go to a library. The AAT is available online (through RLIN at RLG), and there you must pay to use it. Recent discussions on the ARLIS list about obtaining access to online versions of RILA (International Repertory of the History of Art) and BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art) have pointed to the profit-making context through which these resources are made available. The issue here touches on the conflict between a widespread assumption that scholarly resources should be made available without charge, and the real-world requirements that 1) these resources must prove their worthiness by virtue of their commercial demand and 2) that their availability can only be guaranteed when their cost is underwritten by the users. Although AHIP may well be able to fund the compilation of these resources, I'm certain (though I can't speak for them) that they have no desire to provide this data free of charge. The fact that people are willing to pay to receive this information certifies its value and provides incentive for maintaining the resource. Further, allowing free access to this data online will, doubtlessly, tend to destroy the demand for its other manifestations. But there are additional reasons why online access should not predominate: The test that research resources must still pass (the National Initiative to pave the information wagon-trail, notwithstanding) is that of publication. A publication is stable, verifiable, unchangeable, and historically fixed in time. Online resources still are mercurial, intangible, kinetic, unreliable and unstable. When you improve a printed work you have a second edition; when you improve an online database there is no longer any definitive distinction between earlier and later versions. I, as much as the next fellow, would like to spend a free serendipitous Saturday meandering through RILA online; but, if the truth be told, someone has to pay for it. Even when we use the local or academic library system, the costs must be borne by someone, and that someone is going to be us--either directly or indirectly. I remember reading a letter to the editor of the NYTimes (I think about a year ago) that lamented the inaccessibility of information resources online. The author maintained that what the information infrastructure in this country needs is a benefactor like Carnegie--who in fact made manifest, and fixed in our minds our need for and our belief in our entitlement to a free library system. This modernage benefactor, no doubt, would pave the information highway with nuggets of gold. Well, that is not going to happen. We will certainly have free access to online data as long as the form, content, and medium are still experimental, or until the "critical mass" of universal availability has been achieved. When the authors and presenters of free online data become convinced that they have a resource that has commercial validity and vitality, I'll bet that these resources will be turned into yet another income spigot. As mentioned above, this income will validate the resource and keep it operational. Just like public radio and television, that depend upon a mixture of user contribution and major benefactor grants, our new online resources will have to be maintained, at least in part, by our financial support. Paying for it will help guarantee that it won't be able to be cut out or abandoned for financial reasons. What worries me is the future of information resources that may have been placed online and have outlived the demand that fashion and fad bestowed upon them. Still valuable to scholars, expensive to maintain as an online entity, will they fall prey to the degausser's axe? Will arcane resources like my beloved Baudrier's _Bibliographie Lyonnaise_ in 13 volumes die an ignominious death or never see the light of an online day when only ten or twenty people in the world need access to it within a year? Eric's complaint, is our complaint. It is my complaint, too; but it also serves to make us ponder about what we expect the coming generation of online services to bring us and what we should expect to have to pay for them. ______________________________________ Robert A. Baron, Museum Computer Consultant P.O. Box 93, Larchmont, NY 10538 [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]