[WikiEN-l] History started in 1995

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/3/4 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>> 2009/3/4 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
>>> 2009/3/4 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>>>> Doesn't work so well these days. Enough libraries have been closed and
>>>> stock sold off that you don't have to get that obscure before you have
>>>> to turn to the rather expensive out of county loan system. For example
>>>> my county does not have a copy of:
>>>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_This_Thing_Called_Science%3F
>>>
>>> Can we not assume the whole world is situated in the middle of North
>>> America, please?
>>
>> I'm kinda British.
>>
>> Most of the English speaking first world is in a reasonable shape with
>> regard to libraries. Outside that I'm not sure.
>
> Oh, sorry, where you referring to British counties (I'm not sure what
> the public library system is in Britain for this kind of thing - I'm a
> student so have access to university libraries and inter-library loans
> through that which aren't expensive at all - maybe even free)? I
> generally assume if someone doesn't say what country they're talking
> about then they mean the USA - it's usually a pretty safe assumption.

Interlibrary loans at your university (or public library) are not free
at all. They are just free for *you*, because your university picks up
the tab for you. The average cost of an item borrowed through ILL at a
typical mid-size university is between $20-$30 per item. (google:
"average cost interlibrary loan", find lots of studies to this
effect). This, however, is part of the cost of doing research.

Re: print accessibility: a good rule of thumb about whether something
is easy to get or not is whether the item being cited is widely held
at many libraries or not (see: http://worldcat.org, though this isn't
anything like complete outside North America). I favor printed books
that are held by many places over obscure works that are only at one
or two whenever possible. Of course, sometimes this isn't possible,
and a decent bibliography on any topic may be one of the greatest
services Wikipedia provides in a few years. We should strive to cite
it all: print works, online works, anything we can get our hands on.

-- Phoebe, one of your resident grumpy librarians