Re: Electronic or print?

["B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>]

Joe Esposito poses an interesting question.

About a year ago, for reasons I won't go into (largely because 
they are both personal AND boring) I moved my office from an 
upstairs room to a table downstairs just off of the kitchen. It 
was a simple move...bring my laptop downstairs (wireless 
connection). I left the printer upstairs (it wasn't wireless).

It took awhile to wean myself away from print, but I am now at 
the point where I haul the laptop upstairs maybe once or twice a 
month to print something. I don't miss print.

Bernie Sloan
Sora Associates
Bloomington, IN

--- On Mon, 4/27/09, Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
> Subject: Electronic or print?
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Date: Monday, April 27, 2009, 10:47 PM
>
> A recent thread on this list touched on how much printing 
> readers of journal articles are doing.  This has implications 
> for estimating the total costs of the dissemination of 
> materials and also what share different parties shoulder of 
> those costs.
>
> An anecdote:  On a plane this week I noted a gentleman with a 
> large stack of printed-out articles in his lap.  He appeared to 
> be an economist.  The papers lay atop a terribly cool Sony Vaio 
> laptop.
>
> So, access to materials somehow (I didn't inquire), a very good 
> personal computing device, and a stack of printed paper that 
> was a blessing to the stockholders of Hewlett Packard.
>
> How representative is this individual?  Someone can investigate 
> the numbers--or we can call HP and ask.  My sense of the 
> situation is that for the most part we are not *publishing*
>
> electronically:  we are *producing* materials electronically 
> and *consuming* materials in print.
>
> Speaking as someone who reads almost everything off a screen, I 
> don't believe for a minute that this situation will last, but 
> it does challenge some assumptions about the costs of published 
> research and the nature of our still very primitive systems for 
> electronic distribution.
>
> I encourage members of this list to participate in this 
> experiment:  For one month, have your organization disable all 
> printers, copiers, and scanners. How electronic are we? 
> Remember to duck when people start to throw their shoes.
>
> Joe Esposito