Not online? dk;dc

This may seem a bit of an obvious one for this site, but let’s just take a moment to think about those who are dismissive of, not interested in or totally unaware of information that exists offline.  Obviously, dear readers, you are not these people or you wouldn’t be here.  But some days it seems as though you are few in number.

This 2008 article by Hamid R. Jamali assesses the information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers at University College, London.  He finds, alarmingly, that many scientists assume “that if an article is not online then it is not worth the effort to obtain it.” (Author’s italics.)  This pie chart illustrates their agreement to that statement.  Their assumption was that if an article is important or significant, someone would have taken the time to scan and upload it already.

Jill Hurst-Wahl reports on a Master’s thesis by Katie-Rose Repp titled “Special Collections and Social Media: A Study of Two North Carolina Collections.”  Repp states:

The challenge of the digital age is that many would-be patrons now assume that “everything is on the Internet,” and they do not pursue non-digital resources. Special collections staff can meet this challenge through the use of social media tools.

Social media?  Imagine that!  As of July 2010, Repp’s thesis was not available online, but Hurst-Wahl’s blog post contains her contact info if you would like to read it.  The two collections Repp profiled were the Hugh Morton Photographs and Films at UNC Chapel Hill and the Duke Digital Collections.

It’s not clear whether the social media route would work for all those busy scientists, but in any case it can’t hurt to simply TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS BLOG.  Let’s get the word out!

The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation a.k.a. The McGill Guide

This guide, which sets the standard for legal citation in Canada, is published every four years by the McGill Law Journal (of McGill University).  Last updated in 2010, the McGill Guide is an essential reference for law librarians all over Canada and is in fact followed by many Canadian provincial courts as well as legal journals.

However, the McGill Guide remains steadfastly offline — or does it?  Their website provides a link to a password-protected page that, based on the description, would seem to contain an online version of the guide.  If the guide is available online, it is only available to participants in the Jessup International Law Moot Competition.  This 2008 post from Simon Fodden in SLAW, a Canadian legal blog, corroborates the theory that mooters may have exclusive online access to the Guide, or at least parts of it.

SLAW contributor Ted Tjaden asks for an online version here and here, and contributor Gary P. Rodrigues makes an argument here.

National Steinbeck Center Collection and Archives

The National Steinbeck Center in Oldtown Salinas, California interprets the life and works of John Steinbeck through exhibits featuring artifacts, photographs, film clips and other media.  The Center also contains archives, a newspaper collection, and a photographic collection.  None of these have been digitized, meaning that to view the collections you will have to travel to Oldtown Salinas and view them firsthand.  The Center asks that you make an appointment “well in advance.”  The collections, which include items like Steinbeck first editions, personal correspondence, and documents pertaining to local history, among other things, are outlined here.

The world wide web?  Sure, in theory, but think about this: as of 2009, only 0.2% of the people of Sierra Leone had access to the internet.  About 0.3% of Bangladeshis are online, and another 0.3% of people in the Central African Republic, and again in Ethiopia.  1.6% in Turkmenistan.  2% in Nicaragua and Nauru.

That’s Not Online! does not mean to suggest for a second that these people ought to get online, stat.  It would certainly be wonderful if they did so, but ultimately, this blog thinks that the people of these countries should be allowed to improve their lives in whatever way they see fit.

All we are saying is that if you are reading anything online about the people of these nations, there is a very low probability that it was written by them.

*Statistics taken from the CIA World Factbook’s Country Comparison by Internet Users, contrasted with the recorded populations of individual countries.  Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Bridging the Gap: QR codes

That’s Not Online! was founded in the conviction that the “tension” that is meant to exist between print and digital resources is, in fact, a fiction.  At this blog we believe — nay, we KNOW — that print and digital are meant to be together.  They are different, but they complement each other.  They are a marriage made in information heaven.  Do you know who else knows this?  QR codes!

Generated online (natch) and usually printed, QR codes are a way to transfer information from paper to your smartphone — FROM PRINT TO DIGITAL — at the tap of a screen!

Kaywa has a QR-code generator here.  For more about QR codes, consult Wikipedia.

Many old, pre-internet editions of journals, magazines and newspapers have been digitized and put online, freely or otherwise. But how have they been digitized? Have they been converted into HTML? Are they in slick new pdfs, created from a text document? Or are they digital images of the original print edition? Unless it’s the latter, you’re missing something. Yes, those first two file types are easier to search and store. But they don’t have any ads.

Adverts may serve as an important part of the reading experience for someone hoping to immerse herself in a particular culture or era. The placement of a certain ad next to an article might tell you a lot about a publication, or about the aspirations of the company advertising itself. Scanned images of old ads abound on the net, but they are rarely attached to any identifying information, making them useless for research.  Where a citation is provided, the ad is usually cropped from the rest of the page, depriving us of context.

There have been a few systematic attempts to digitize old ads. This website scans and uploads advertisements from theatre programmes in the Arthur Lloyd Archive.  The Guardian’s online archive is available here, for a price, and contains full-page scans of the paper.  The NYPL digital gallery has this series on old tobacco cards.  And the National Library of Scotland has captured some old advertisements through its digitized Scottish Post Office directories. (If you are aware of another, submit here.)

In general, however, it would seem that digitization is consigning old ads to the dustbin.  To find them, head for any library with a substantial back collection of newspapers or periodicals, or with special archival collections. TNO can report that the Osler Library of the History of Medicine of McGill University has a collection of old medical almanacs that contains some quite telling old adverts.  Or try the British Library Newspaper Reading Room, profiled on this very blog.

This edition of That’s Not Online! was inspired by this post from DaleA at K-State Libraries, who recounts the surprises that awaited her when she left her desk to take a magazine off the shelf.