From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 22:12:03 -0500

It would have been preferable, of course, for PUP to make these
backlist books available digitally online for free, as some other
presses like California and Pittsburgh have done, recovering some of
its costs through sales of the POD editions.  Or perhaps it should
have sought a grant to cover the cost of digitization so that all the
books could be OA. Countries in the developing world, I would guess,
are not going to be buying a collection like this for their public
libraries, so I have to wonder about how much PUP is serving its
mission of disseminating these works to "society at large."

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:44:12 -0400
>
> New announcement from Princeton Press
>
> http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2014/07/14/princeton-university-press-launches-princeton-legacy-library/
>
> They will monetize the backlist and offer the collection through
> "leading library aggregators" with Ingram as the primary provider.
>
> It will be valuable to have this list available in digital form, but
> the project reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones in *Men in Black* when he
> shows Will Smith the amazing technologies the aliens have brought.
> Showing him a tiny device that stores incredible quantities of
> recorded music (MIB came some years before the iPod), he tosses it
> aside with the throwaway line, "Guess I'll have to buy the White Album
> again."
>
> What we now call "content" is the gift that lets you keep paying for
> it over and over and over . . . I bought the White Album again myself
> in about 2006.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown