Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:19:29 +0530 From: Susmita Chakraborty With regard to Mr. Leonard Fernandes' comments, I have a question to ask the LIS community. When some (rare) resources are uploaded so that everyone can have it for free, is it not defeating the purpose if someone (publisher or any other other profitmaking body) tries to earn profit from it? On the other hand, I feel that libraries having such rich archives must go the digital way(digitization and dissemination of rare materials) by exploring state/national government or other funds and then try to derive some revenue from these resources to cover the running costs of those libraries. In these days of finance-crunch, it may point out one way to break-even. Regards. Susmita Chakraborty Bengal Engineering & Science University, Shibpur, Howrah, W.B. On 4/10/08, Mailing List Admin wrote:

Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 16:07:57 +0100 (BST) From: Leonard Fernandes

Bold step indeed!!

Being a print-on-demand publisher myself, we had approached the Goa Central Library with a unique proposal. The Central Library, instituted during the Portuguese rule in Goa, has a unique collection of rare manuscripts written in Konkani, Marathi, English and Portuguese, not to mention a vast archive of newspapers. However, the collection has aged and is fragile. Therefore, when people come to research on this part of the world and have to either turn them away or risk damaging the books further.

We had proposed that we will scan these books and produce one copy (most copyrights have expired) that they can use to give to researchers and other visitors. Print-On-Demand allows printing of just one copy at a time and the technology is aptly suited for this kind of a situation. We had also proposed that we will print their books that are stored in microfilm. Both proposals met with rejection despite the curator being in favour of them because "books were a step backward when the whole world was going digital"

In the context of such hare-brained decisions, one can only admire the initiative taken by the Xavier college at Kolkota

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Mailing List Admin wrote: Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 11:02:21 +0530 From: Susmita Chakraborty

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Congratulations to The Librarian, The Principal and the other members of the team for doing a tremendous piece of work towards preserving great cultural heritage of mother India.

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Hope many others will get inspired.

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Regards.

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Susmita Chakraborty

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Kolkata

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