Msg: 6516 *Conference*
05-09-96 11:48:27
From: GARY WEBER
To : RICHARD HANSON
Subj: REPLY TO MSG #6513 (PUBLICATIONS)
Boy, that XYZ thing sure was interesting.... ;) Search engine? Well, ponder this... How does one search through any magazine they have in their hands for something specific? They look in the table of contents! One could still do that even with everything on CD-ROM, by looking at the "image" of the TOC page. Perhaps there could be some master index of TOC pages right at the beginning, so you'd see all of the TOC's from all of the publications at once. Sure, the "search" would be manual, but no more so than by looking at the magazines themselves. One other idea might be to simply provide photo copies of magazines on a per-magazine basis. I could photo copy all of the Laptop User and 8201 User issues I have and send them to you. Then, you could photo copy the number of copies you want on hand and give them out to people on request. If everyone did that for the publications we all have, you'd end up with a fairly large library of stuff. Of course, then there's the HUGE stockpile of publications that you personally have. Perhaps on a magazine-by-magazine basis, you could copy it, charge a fee to cover your time & copying costs, and send them out to the requestor. (Hmmmmm..) Or perhaps you'd send out several magazines to people willing to do the work themselves: They'd make several copies of each magazine, keep one of them themselves, send the rest back to you along with the original magazine's and you'd have some for anyone else interested in those specific issues. Awe heck, I'm just rambling... I'd be interested in either a photo-copy *or* a CD-ROM solution. In either case, we'd be able to share *ALL* of the technical knowledge in existance with anyone interested. Gary.