[lg policy] Re: The Ancient Language, and the Dialect of Cornwall, with, an Enlarged Glossary of Cornish Provincial Words: Jago

Thu Oct 2 16:59:41 UTC 2014

Well, I'm with you there. I for one can't manage a bath without doing some research!

But still, I'm not sure how a physical book would be better than, say, a Kindle for 
either bath or backpack. Cost-wise you can get a second hand Kindle for a little bit 
more than the cost of this book, and it can display as many books as you like - plus 
it's not as though the book would fare much better than the Kindle if it slipped in 
for an unplanned swim in the bath.

As for comparative quality, I would suggest people judge for themselves. Take a look 
at the PDF on the Internet Archive page I linked to. It's an exquisitely high quality 
professional scan: the pages are completely straight (no warping along the spine), 
and there are indeed no ink blots, scribbles, cigarette burns, squashed insects, 
discoloured paper, or photographs of people's hands or pieces of machinery - and to 
top it all off it's been fully OCR'd to allow searching, copying and pasting.

If CUP really went to all the trouble you've detailed, I'm not altogether sure why. 
You've at best duplicated what's already been achieved by the Internet Archive (in 
this case with the kind sponsorship of the National Library of Scotland). I agree 
your product will probably be of value to some people, and a publisher has to earn an 
honest crust! But let's not be spreading needless uncertainty and doubt about the 
alternatives.

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers

> Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 11:48:27 +0100
> From: Kate Brett <kbrett at cambridge.org>
> Subject: Re: [lg policy] The Ancient Language, and the Dialect of
> 	Cornwall,	with an Enlarged Glossary of Cornish Provincial Words: Jago
> To: Language Policy List <lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu>
> Message-ID:
> 	<OF95B97AC7.614A757E-ON80257D65.0037C5EF-80257D65.003B5E58 at cambridge.org>
> 	
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> I am really grateful to Dave Sayers for having drawn attention to this new
> book.
>
> As a regular reader of this list, and the Publisher responsible for this
> and some 200 other reissues of linguistics books  at Cambridge, I hope
> it's OK for me to respond briefly to his comments.
>
> We at Cambridge are of course aware that free electronic versions of most
> of the books we reissue are available to those who desire them. This is a
> Good Thing. We are also aware that many people still like to have a print
> copy of books they refer to regularly, but can't necessarily find or
> afford antiquarian copies, or would like to have a book they can put in
> their backpack or read in the bath without worrying about its fragility.
> Our aim is to produce the best quality reprints for such customers.
> Cambridge does not simply lift a pdf from some random place on the
> internet and reproduce it warts and all. We re-photograph each book on our
> own premises and digitally clean the images so that the resulting printed
> book has clean pages and legible type - no ink blots, scribbles, cigarette
> burns, squashed insects, discoloured paper, or photographs of people's
> hands or pieces of machinery. We also make sure that all the pages (and
> illustrations) are actually present, and produce new covers for each
> individual work, as well as proper metadata about dimensions, pagination,
> and the date of the edition reproduced.
>
> All this takes a lot of time and skill, and I just wish Dave was right
> about 'pure profit'. Obviously I can't give away commercially sensitive
> information, but I can put my hand on my heart and say that by the time we
> have paid a royalty to our library partners and a salary to our staff, as
> well as the cost of manufacture and the usual overheads, it would be
> something of an exaggeration to say we are laughing all the way to the
> bank.  Our mission is 'to disseminate knowledge', not make vast profits
> for shareholders, but, that being said, we do have to balance our books.
>
> I hope some of you might like to find out a bit more about what we do, in
> which case please follow the link under my signature and click on the
> 'books' tab to see all the subject areas covered by the Cambridge Library
> Collection and access lists of books in each of them. You could also
> follow our blog, like us on Facebook, or talk to us on Twitter. And if
> there is a particular book we've not done yet, that is out of copyright
> and you would like to see in print, do let me know!
>
> Good wishes to you all
>
> Kate
>
>
> Dr Katharina Brett
> Publisher, Cambridge Library Collection
> www.cambridge.org/clc
> 01223 325656
>
> Click here to visit the Cambridge Library Collection blog
>
> Facebook: Cambridge Library Collection
> Twitter:  Click here to follow the Cambridge Library Collection on Twitter
>
>
>
>
> From:   Dave Sayers <dave.sayers at cantab.net>
> To:     Language Policy List <lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu>
> Date:   02/10/2014 09:11
> Subject:        [lg policy] The Ancient Language, and the Dialect of
> Cornwall, with an Enlarged Glossary of Cornish Provincial Words: Jago
> Sent by:        lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu
>
>
>
> CUP have decided to reprint Fred Jago's 1882 volume, http://bit.ly/1pqFK4S
> , for
> $36.99 (pure profit since it's long out of copyright).
>
> It's a very interesting book, but thankfully you needn't shell out a penny
> since it's
> online at the Internet Archive, in a variety of accessible formats:
> https://archive.org/details/ancientlanguaged00jago
>
> Oll an Gwella,
> Dave
>
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers
> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
> Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
> dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers
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