Jim Weinheimer wrote:
> ... From a personal point of view, I think something like this could be
> extremely good for society, as people discover that great materials are
> available for free. ...
>
> Although I may be wrong, I think many, many people would opt for the
> free; or at least give them a real try. And of those people willing to
> give them a try, some may even prefer the older works to the newer
> works. People may once again experience the power of the older works.
> ... what if someone "updated" [Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"]? In any
> case, I think it may be possible that older works, out of copyright,
> may play a more vital role in our society than before. ...
>
> I believe that this is exactly the area where both the ethics and the
> tools of librarians can play a pivotal role not only for our own
> patrons, but for all of society: that is, to help people know what is
> really and truly available to them, no matter where it happens to
> be.... Of course, this is a huge amount of material and people will
> continue to require a lot of help to navigate it and use it wisely.
> ... In short, librarians need to be the trusted information
> professionals that we are now and have always been, and we need to
> transfer these values into the ever-widening information universe.
I applaud your essay! I'm responding to point out a "dark side" to
free public domain works that I became aware of recently which may
tax the abilities and tools of librarians, but which I think is
absolutely important for the future (unless we want some similarities
to "1984"). The concern I wish to share is that of altering free
public domain text without any obvious or external clues to that
effect other than comparing the text with other sources.
A blatant example I recently became aware of is a work by the famous
market trader W.D. Gann entitled "The Magic Word". The 2008 "Revised
Edition" published by The Richest Man In Babylon Publishing
CHANGED(!) the "magic word", substituted a different translation for
the selected Bible verses contained therein, and omitted significant
amounts of original text (and probably altered other text, too). Yet
the title and author attribution remain the same (the author died in
1955, so he could NOT have "revised" this work). Someone who did not
know of these major alterations might think this is essentially the
original work with a few updates here and there, not a whole new
work! (This publisher has done similar "editing" and reformatting of
other Gann works, to the detriment of the originals, which depend on
the exactness of language, pagination, etc.)
Admittedly, this is an example of a commercial "remake", if you will,
but the same thing could happen with existing texts (especially
controversial texts) altered in some way by someone with an agenda or
just for the heck of it. (After all, you can do anything you want
with a public domain text.) Since anyone in the world can become
their own online "publisher" these days (that is, their own
repository of collected and/or created texts) and since altered texts
could spread like wildfire (even without any evil intention), I think
it will become EXTREMELY important that librarians become aware both
of reputable sources for public domain texts and of sources known to
have altered original texts. Perhaps designated web "repositories"
could be "certified" (or something) that the texts contained therein
are genuine, original, and unaltered.
FWIW.
Harvey
Received on Fri Mar 12 2010 - 11:19:04 EST