Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Saruman boots up his iBall

Saruman boots up his iBall

Last night, around 2 a.m., after frustration at trying to transcribe the sometimes illegible file I’d gotten off of Google Books, I submitted an interlibrary loan request to the Auburn University library via the AU website. (They still call it interlibrary “loan” even when what’s requested is a scan or photocopy rather than a physical copy.)

Some time this morning, someone in the AU library sent a request to someone at the University of Michigan, who then went into the UM library stacks, found the 19th-century French periodical I was interested in, scanned a clean legible copy of the article I needed, and sent it as a PDF to my library – and it was waiting for me in my email by 10:21 a.m.

5 Responses to Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology

  1. Roderick July 19, 2012 at 8:49 pm #

    I don’t mean that photocopies are non-physical ….

  2. Ashton July 19, 2012 at 9:23 pm #

    What was the French periodical?

    • Roderick July 21, 2012 at 12:52 am #

      La Liberté de Penser: Revue Démocratique VIII.43 (1851), pp. 124-147. It’s a piece by the French individualist anarchist Anselme Bellegarrigue. After I translate it, I’ll be putting it online in both French and English.

      • Ashton July 21, 2012 at 8:54 am #

        Not that I would have known; simply curiosity. That one should be interesting.

  3. da99 July 20, 2012 at 2:50 am #

    +1 for Aston’s question.

    It would be even more magical if you could upload the file or share it publically using bittorrent. You are probably held back because of copyright laws.

    People are also illegally scanning books and sharing them fore free over bittorrent. Maybe they should be called “extremist librarians”? “Black market librarians”?

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