Science and Technology news... :: View topic - Out-of-print math books: An Update

Guest

Not long ago I suggested the possibility of a website for collecting
information about the demand for various out-of-print math books. Klaus
Schmid promptly set up http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com

The site is just a prototype so it is rather klunky, but I believe it
already provides valuable information. As a result of the site, I learned
that Cassels and Frohlich (Algebraic Number Theory) was out of print and
very much in demand, and that David Savitt had made an unsuccessful attempt
ten years ago to bring it back into print. David and I, working together,
managed to get the American Mathematical Society interested in reprinting
it. The copyright situation is complicated so there is no guarantee, but
I am optimistic.

Two other books listed on the site that are likely to come back into print
are "Matching Theory" by Lovasz and Plummer and "Matroid Theory" by Dominic
Welsh.

If you like the idea of this site, then here is my suggestion for how you
can help. Pick a book on the site---either one you personally like, or
one that has a lot of votes (click on "statistics" at the bottom of the
main page)---and then find out who has the rights to the book. In many
cases this will be either the author or the publisher. Then try to
persuade the copyright holder to make the book available.

A common obstacle will be that the publisher holds the rights but does
not think it will be profitable to republish the book. In that case
you can try to persuade the publisher to hand the rights back to the
author (if the author is still alive) or over to a national mathematical
society.

The results of your efforts can be posted as a comment on Schmid>s site
so that others will be able to benefit from them, even if you are not
fully successful.

The above procedure is essentially what I did with Cassels and Frohlich.
It may sound like a lot of work, but it isn>t really; it just requires
some persistence.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

MoeBlee · Guest

Thanks, Tim. I voted on the books; and I added my suggestion:
'Recursive Functions' by Peter.

MoeBlee

Alex Plantema · Guest

tchow@lsa.umich.edu schreef in news:48e54704$0$297$b45e6eb0@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu

[quote]Not long ago I suggested the possibility of a website for collecting
information about the demand for various out-of-print math books.
Klaus Schmid promptly set up http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com
[/quote]
Nice initiative, but that page is more complicated than necessary, slow and hard to handle.
Why should votes against a book be counted, and why should I vote when I don>t or barely need a book?
If I don>t vote, I don>t need to give a reason either. There are zillions of books I>m not looking for.

Make it simple: put a single checkbox in front of each title and one button at the end of the page and count the votes.

Recently I found that a title I was looking for since 1987,
Computer approximations by J.F. Hart et al., is available in print again.

--
Alex.

Guest

In article <48e8e009$0$197$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>,
Alex Plantema <alex@nl.invalid> wrote:
[quote]Nice initiative, but that page is more complicated than necessary, slow
and hard to handle.
[/quote]
Thanks for the feedback...I>ll pass it on to Klaus.

We know that the site is not well-designed, but wanted to get something up
quickly as a proof of concept. I think the ideal situation is for a large
bookselling site to incorporate the concept into their site. However, I
have not had much luck with that angle yet.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

Angus Rodgers · Guest

On 05 Oct 2008 18:23:44 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:

[quote]I think the ideal situation is for a large
bookselling site
[/quote]
.... mentioning no names! ... ;-)

[quote]to incorporate the concept into their site.
[/quote]
--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril

Guest

In article <gj1ie41lkggdbvls9effst5ran9aaqcq4p@4ax.com>,
Angus Rodgers <twirlip@bigfoot.com> wrote:
[quote]On 05 Oct 2008 18:23:44 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
I think the ideal situation is for a large
bookselling site

... mentioning no names! ... ;-)
[/quote]
I wasn>t being coy; Amazon isn>t the only possibility. There>s Alibris,
Bookfinder, Barnes & Noble, AddAll, .... Even Google Books, although they
don>t sell books. I got BooksPrice and Fetchbook.Info somewhat interested
in the concept, though I don>t know if they>ll actually implement it.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

Bill Dubuque · Guest

tchow@lsa.umich.edu writes:
[quote]
Not long ago I suggested the possibility of a website for collecting
information about the demand for various out-of-print math books. Klaus
Schmid promptly set up http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com
[/quote]
As an alternative, effort would be better spent on ensuring
such books make it into the scan queue of the various programs
that are scanning books. That way publishers can offer online
copies at minimal cost and, until then, one can search the
books and view limited previews. Since hardcopy books will
soon be dinosaurs, why waste effort on such?

--Bill Dubuque

Guest

In article <y8z3ajaptuk.fsf@nestle.csail.mit.edu>,
Bill Dubuque <wgd@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
[quote]tchow@lsa.umich.edu writes:

Not long ago I suggested the possibility of a website for collecting
information about the demand for various out-of-print math books. Klaus
Schmid promptly set up http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com

As an alternative, effort would be better spent on ensuring
such books make it into the scan queue of the various programs
that are scanning books. That way publishers can offer online
copies at minimal cost and, until then, one can search the
books and view limited previews. Since hardcopy books will
soon be dinosaurs, why waste effort on such?
[/quote]
I have no objection to your proposal---it is a good one---except for your
suggestion that there is something incompatible between making a book
available electronically and making a book available in hardcopy.

The debate about hardcopy books versus electronic books can sometimes
take on a partisan character, reminiscent of partisan religious or political
debates. Your comments above are a good example of the kind of partisanship
that I>m referring to. While I have no problems with someone spending effort
trying to make a book available either electronically or in hardcopy, I do
object if someone tries to *impede* efforts on the other side of the partisan
divide.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

Bill Dubuque · Guest

tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
[quote]Bill Dubuque <wgd@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
tchow@lsa.umich.edu writes:

Not long ago I suggested the possibility of a website for collecting
information about the demand for various out-of-print math books. Klaus
Schmid promptly set up http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com

As an alternative, effort would be better spent on ensuring
such books make it into the scan queue of the various programs
that are scanning books. That way publishers can offer online
copies at minimal cost and, until then, one can search the
books and view limited previews. Since hardcopy books will
soon be dinosaurs, why waste effort on such?

I have no objection to your proposal---it is a good one---except for your
suggestion that there is something incompatible between making a book
available electronically and making a book available in hardcopy.
[/quote]
Incompatible, why would you think that? Certainly one could
simultaneously pursue both approaches.

[quote]The debate about hardcopy books versus electronic books can sometimes
take on a partisan character, reminiscent of partisan religious or political
debates. Your comments above are a good example of the kind of partisanship
that I>m referring to. While I have no problems with someone spending effort
trying to make a book available either electronically or in hardcopy, I do
object if someone tries to *impede* efforts on the other side of the partisan
divide.
[/quote]
Indeed, such is the nature of technological (r)evolution. Debates
still rage about vinyl records vs. cd vs mp3, analog vs. digital
amplifiers, projectors, etc. There will always be those who cling
to the past for whatever reasons. I>m ecstatic that I can carry
around my entire library in my pocket. Whenever a spark of intuition
strikes, I can access whatever information I need in seconds, not
hours, days, or months. I can rapidly search millions of documents
to recall long-forgotten ideas from decades ago; locate related
work; find definitions, translate foreign language texts, etc, etc.
So, seriously, why do you prefer paper media, which lack all these
capabilities and many more?

--Bill Dubuque

outofprintmath · Guest

On Oct 5, 5:40 pm, "Alex Plantema" <a...@nl.invalid> wrote:
[quote][...]
Why should votes against a book be counted, and why should I vote when I don>t or barely need a book?
[/quote]
All votings are optional and independent from each other. There might
be many reasons, why you don>t need a book. You can promote your
reason for or against a book by posting a comment below the
corresponding voting. Comments are optional, but they might help to
promote your vote.

[quote]Make it simple: put a single checkbox in front of each title and
one button at the end of the page and count the votes.
[/quote]
If several items are defined in one voting at one time, no further
items can be added later. I think this is appropriate, because
pressing the vote button for a list of items normally has a different
meaning.

I am aware that the current voting list is kludge and the loading
behaviour, depending on your environment, could be better. Using
Firefox it is still acceptable for me and I am working to reduce the
voting list to improve the visibility and promotion of the most
promising items. See also my comment about cleanup on the Discussion
subpage.

Please note also, that there is no need to scan the list repeatedly
for new book submissions, the newest are always on top of the list and
all new comments including new book submissions are listed on
http://outofprintmath-comments.blogspot.com/.

Thank you for this and any further suggestions.

-- Klaus Schmid

Angus Rodgers · Guest

On Mon, 6 Oct 2008 01:50:23 -0700 (PDT), outofprintmath
<outofprintmath@googlemail.com> wrote:

[quote]I am aware that the current voting list is kludge and the loading
behaviour, depending on your environment, could be better. Using
Firefox it is still acceptable for me
[/quote]
Using Firefox (2.0.0.17), it crashes my poor old Win98SE system.
Poor and old it may be, but that system is pretty stable in most
respects. Loading this page, it runs completely out of system
resources, bad things happen, and I have to reboot. Not always,
but usually.

[quote]Thank you for this and any further suggestions.
[/quote]
And thank you for providing the service.

--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril

Guest

In article <y8zy712nwoz.fsf@nestle.csail.mit.edu>,
Bill Dubuque <wgd@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
[quote]So, seriously, why do you prefer paper media, which lack all these
capabilities and many more?
[/quote]
While I don>t consider myself a partisan of either side, the main advantage I
see of paper media is that it is much more likely to last 500 years once it>s
on the shelf, even if nobody is interested in it.

In an ideal world, all electronic documents are upgraded whenever the de
factor standard format changes. In the real world, only the high-priority
items get this treatment.

The other reason, in the current context, for pursuing paper publication is
that I can get the results much sooner. Assuming all goes well, I should
have a new copy of Welsh>s book by next summer. The infrastructure for
electronic books isn>t in place yet for that. This may change in the future,
of course, but it>s the reality today, and I want the book as quickly and
cheaply as possible.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

herbzet · Guest

Bill Dubuque wrote:

[quote]So, seriously, why do you prefer paper media, which lack all these
capabilities and many more?
[/quote]
1) Don>t need batteries.
2) Won>t break if dropped.
3) Recognizable from their cover.
4) Like the smell.

--
hz

Ben Pfaff · Guest

herbzet <herbzet@gmail.com> writes:

[quote]Bill Dubuque wrote:
So, seriously, why do you prefer paper media, which lack all these
capabilities and many more?

1) Don>t need batteries.
2) Won>t break if dropped.
3) Recognizable from their cover.
4) Like the smell.
[/quote]
5) Much more convenient for reading in bed.
6) Don>t take up valuable on-screen real estate.
--
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
--D. E. Knuth, "Structured Programming with go to Statements"

Bart Goddard · Guest

Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu> wrote in
news:87y711y950.fsf@blp.benpfaff.org:

[quote]herbzet <herbzet@gmail.com> writes:

Bill Dubuque wrote:
So, seriously, why do you prefer paper media, which lack all these
capabilities and many more?

1) Don>t need batteries.
2) Won>t break if dropped.
3) Recognizable from their cover.
4) Like the smell.

5) Much more convenient for reading in bed.
6) Don>t take up valuable on-screen real estate.
[/quote]
7) Can snap shut with satisfying "whump" when idiot
won>t quit interrupting you while you>re trying to read.

8) Can "whump" idiot>s head solidly when he doesn>t get
the hint above.

9) Can read on airplane during take-off and landing
(unless idiot insists on talking to you.)

10) Often the mere sight of a _book_ will drive idiots off.
(It messes with their Ipods or something.)

11) Devoid of "OMG" and "UR" and other such idiot-speak.

12) I like leather.

--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.


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