Net publication of Jewish Music Conference papers, London 2000

[jonathan walton <jaw42...>]

Hi everyone


Thanks Geraldine for your reply to my comments re: your intention to let 
people download JMI conference papers for a small fee. I understand that the 
conference was expensive to mount but I don't see the connection:
I can't imagine that the money you might gain from charging for the papers 
would go any way whatsoever towards offsetting the costs incurred. You might 
earn a few pounds but you more importantly you would be denying interested 
people (like myself) the oppuortunity to find out more.

The bottom line is this: do you want fascinating and learned material from a 
groundbreaking conference on Jewish Music to be available to everybody, or 
just to a few research scholars and institutions?
Merely 'interested people' would not pay to download a lecture - I for one 
would like to scan through all of them, but I couldnt pay for this 
privelege.

I don't think making information free on the net devalues the scholars or 
the host, on the contrary it seems absolutely 'ethically right' to me. Of 
course you can not put it on the net and release it in a book which you can 
sell, but as I see it information on the net from an educational body should 
be free of charge, no question.

I understand that funds are always extremely short and that independent arts 
bodies are always looking for ways to raise extra revenue, but I think this 
path is a misconceived one and will ultimately bear little fruit. After all 
your work putting on such a fantastic festival it would be a shame if others 
could not continue to share in it.

Anyone else have any feelings on this?
Yours
Jonathan.

>Re publishing papers:
>
>If we published in the usual way we would have to pay a lot and people
>would buy the
>book say for £20

>If we publish the papers individually on the web, people have a choice
>of reading the
>abstract and choosing which papers they want to read.  Then for a small
>fee they can
>have them sent.  The conference was expensive for us to mount.  Even to
>publish on the
>web they have to be edited and someone needs to post them and monitor
>requests and I
>don't see that the results of this administration and scholarship >should
>be available
>entirely free of charge. There can be sliding scales possibly,  for >more
>that one
>article the price could come down say £4 for one article, £3.50 each >for
>two £3 each for
>three and £20 for £10 or more.  In this way too we value the >scholarship
>and make it
>available to bona fine readers in the same way one might do with a hard
>copy
>publication.  There could be a lower price for students possibly.  I
>think it is
>ethically wrong to make it available completely free.  But that begs >the
>question as to
>do we owe the writer, or are we disseminating their work in a
>responsible way in a
>scholarly publication.

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