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February 13, 2006
Abandoning print
The Beloved Partner is an historian. This fact is connected to the fact that he cannot part with artifacts of the past, whether it's door hinges dug up in the garden, t-shirts from college, or bound sets of nineteenth-century Harper's.
Thus it's not surprising that BP is horrified with what I'm contemplating: ditching my paper copies of journals that are now available online. I could discard issues of College English, Pedagogy, College Composition and Communication, Computers and Composition, PMLA, Critical Inquiry, and Rhetoric Review, saving a total of about 5 feet of shelf space.
Would I be crazy to do this? Would I be depending too much on the internet? Or is my hesitation an indication that I'm too slow to trust the electronic medium?
Posted by senioritis at February 13, 2006 04:22 PM
Comments
1. You know, until you mentioned the Old Testament thing awhile back, I thought BP was an athletic coach of some sort.
2. I never bothered to keep copies of any of those in the first place, and it’s never hurt me.
Posted by: Krista at February 13, 2006 10:03 PM
Well, for what it's worth -- the librarians in the archives at SU told me a couple of years ago that they aren't trusting online technology exclusively just yet. Granted, they probably have more of a love for the tangible, but still. They had some good reasons at the time, although I can't remember them now. Mikey
Posted by: Mikey at February 14, 2006 02:12 AM
I haven't thrown every journal out yet, but I have been going through and getting rid of moldy, smelly paperbacks of books I used as an undergrad that I never use and that have been replaced by hardback books. I've been ruthless and unacademic about it, frankly. Even my office has been purged so that I only keep books I use and current examination copies. It's the clutter that motivates me. I wonder though, regarding the journals, if there isn't a compromise safeguard--what if the library or the subscriber saves a copy to a CD?
Posted by: joanna at February 14, 2006 09:33 AM