Posted by James Pepper on January 26, 2000 at 04:41:16 in 152.163.195.179 :
In Reply to: Access to the pictures and articles? posted by Doug May on January 26, 2000 at 02:30:30:
Doug: I am just as frustrated as you are with the inability to get a digital copy of the material, but it can not be done. As I have explained before this is a special collections library which is only open usually in the day or at night on one night of the week. Remember the movie Citizen Kane? where the reporter goes into the special collections library, it is similar to that situation. You go into the library armed with a pencil and a few sheets of paper. You sign in and walk through the vault door and sit in a chair facing the librarian who is behind a glass wall. And you look at what they bring in. There is NO chance of Photographing the pages. There is NO chance of photocopying the pages, the photocopyer is in another building. This is because the pages are EXTREMELY FRAGILE! just bending the page will cause it to break off. The paper it was printed on was not a great quality to begin with and it is 90 years old! So I will list the listings in the event that you-all can find a copy of Engineering and know where to look. If a digital copy is to be made, it will have to be done once, the handling of the pages would destroy them, therefore it will have to be done correctly and completely. The resources to do this do not exist at that library because someone would have to do it! Since the drawings are all heavily detailed, this is not your ordinary page scan! I figure if I can come up with a complete listing of what Engineering has in its volumes, I can convince the librarians that it would be a worthwhile project, but it is still a longshot! There is not that much demand for something like this, there are other things that take precedence.
James Pepper