Future of CDROM, DVD, etc.

[Doug Yanega]

>So, buy the books and lump it.  Kwitchyer bellyakin'. I figure that if I
>will use a book at least 5-6 times, I get it, no matter what the cost.

Well, most of the books I referred to are out-of-print, or would be used
maybe once every 5 years or so. The point is that unless one buys certain
books, one may have great difficulty accessing them, because libraries are
NOT exhaustive.

>The people who really are hit hard are students.  Our bookstore charges $138
>Canadian for Borror et al., 1993, An introduction to the study of insects.
>What does it cost in the US?  I am guessing somewhere around $80 US.

Actually, here you give a perfect example of why we should avoid mass
publishing of certain kinds of textbooks on paper. Borror et al.'s list of
recognized families - and the keys, by extension - are very much
out-of-date. If this were a print-on-demand publication, updates to the
master file could be made as family level classifications change, and
students would be trained with the most up-to-date keys possible, instead
of learning a classification system that is a decade old. Problem is, it's
doubtful that either the publishers or authors would prefer that approach
to their present approach, and they're the ones making the decisions, not
us.

Peace,


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
           http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82