[Update: The Research Fairy came through. Thank you, Research Fairy!]
One of the frustrating things about being a writer who is not affiliated with a college or university is lack of access to reference material. This is the age of the intertubes, correct? A wealth of information is available online, and yet those of us outside the campus environment cannot read some of that material, even though its availability might be crucial (or at least very helpful) to any writing projects we might be embarking upon.
Some of the online repositories offer a pay-per-view setup, in which a member of the public can buy someone’s six-page paper for forty bucks or so. This is sometimes worth it. But below, presented for your interest, are ten articles which are seemingly unavailable at any price short of bus fare to the nearest college library, where it seems one runs, of late, the risk of being TASERed. (I refuse to say “tased.” TASER is an acronym, and a fun one at that. Do submarine commanders have their crew “sone” nearby battleships?)
Anyway, this JSTOR wall thing is a damned shame. Don’t you think? I mean, look at the dates on the cites below. None is recent. Some are way out of copyright.
In completely unrelated news, I am reminded that on occasion a CRN reader might wish to send me a file or document of some sort and this is as good a time as any to remind you that my email account at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is available for that purpose.
Ow. I think I must have something in my eye. I keep having to wink.
Shasta Ground Sloth Food Habits, Rampart Cave, Arizona; Richard M. Hansen; Paleobiology, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer, 1978), pp. 302-319
Comparative Germination and Early Growth Studies of Six Species of the Genus Yucca; James A. McCleary; American Midland Naturalist, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Oct., 1973), pp. 503-508
Ecology of Desert Plants. I. Observations on Germination in the Joshua Tree National Monument, California; F. W. Went; Ecology, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Jul., 1948), pp. 242-253
Seed Predation Due to the Yucca-moth Symbiosis; Jon E. Keeley, Sterling C. Keeley, Cheryl C. Swift, Janet Lee; American Midland Naturalist, Vol. 112, No. 1 (Jul., 1984), pp. 187-191
Weight Maintenance of the Desert Woodrat (Neotoma lepida) on Some Natural Foods; Toby Chess, Robert M. Chew; Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Feb., 1971), pp. 193-195
A Histochemical and Ultrastructural Study of Yucca Seed Proteins; Harry T. Horner, Jr., Howard J. Arnott; American Journal of Botany, Vol. 52, No. 10 (Nov. - Dec., 1965), pp. 1027-1038
The Yucca Moth and Yucca Pollination; C. V. Riley; Missouri Botanical Garden Annual Report, Vol. 1892, 1892 (1892), pp. 99-158
The Panamint Indians of California; Frederick Vernon Coville; American Anthropologist, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct., 1892), pp. 351-362
Food Habits of the Antelope Ground Squirrel in Southern Nevada; W. Glen Bradley; Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Feb., 1968), pp. 14-21
Some Aspects of the Life History of the Yucca Night Lizard, Xantusia vigilis; Malcolm R. Miller; Copeia, Vol. 1951, No. 2 (Jun. 8, 1951), pp. 114-120
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Some libraries allow you to get memberships that give you access to digital databases. Check out http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001285.php .
I agree that, at the very least, old articles should be free to access. Anybody up for a journal Project Gutenberg?
I feel your pain, since I, too, don’t have university or college affiliation, and must often throw myself on the mercy of scientists of my acquaintance.
BTW, a belated welcome back to the blogosphere. I hope you had a refreshing break!
Thanks, Jennifer. How’ve you been? Do anything interesting while I had my back turned?
And Jane ol’ pal, thanks for the pointer. I’ll have to go get a San Francisco library card this week.
In other, unrelated news, the Research Fairy just emailed me ten documents! Truly these are the days of miracle and wonder.
Delurking to say that I still have JSTOR access until the end of the semester and, if you still need any of these articles, will be more than happy to send them along.
Berkeley and UCSF aren’t UCLA; you can probably risk an hour or so on-site. But do try the local library. Here in New York City, there’s at least one branch with walk-in JSTOR access. (And if you really can’t get them, and really need them, I can go to it.)
By the way, I think anyone in the world can get a NYPL library card, and there’s a lot you can do remotely with it. JSTOR isn’t one of those things, but EBSCO, for example, is.
I’m not in academia, either, and a quick read-through of your list shows that none of the items is on my shelves at home.
btw, your smileys link doesn’t seem to work.
I’ve downloaded them. Now if only gmail worked fast enough, you’d have them already…
Ok you should receive it from my other institutional e-mail id, which fortunately is MUCH more reliable. Good luck
I think I must have something in my eye
And maybe a nervous tic near the elbow.
Having left academia before all this intertubes nonsense, I have difficulty generating sympathy. But I’m trying. Maybe you could write a poem about not having access to research material.
I have them all and was attempting to send them when I noticed Natasha had already given it a go. If you’re still in need, just email me.
Chris, you should get to know my friend Kristen, alias Dirtgirl. She’s a digital media librarian at Cal State Channel islands, in lovely Camarillo, CA (at the old looney bin). As a fellow gardener and desert-lover, I’m sure she could assist you with research if necessary. I’ll write to her and tell her about your book project, and see what she has to say. She’s commented on one of your posts that I sent to her:
http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/thomomys_bottae/
If you take one continuing education course at the local uni, would that give you access to JSTOR? Over the course of a term, tuition could be cheaper than the article fees.
A librarian friend of mine told me about a woman whose child was diagnosed with a horrible disease. She wanted to keep up on the latest medical research, so she volunteered at the Yale library (I think it was) solely to get access to the journals. Cases like that are driving the NIH public access initiative: it seems clear to everyone except medical publishers and some associations and researchers that taxpayer-funded medical research should be freely available to the taxpaying public within a reasonable amount of time (say, six months).
Academics, DO NOT give your copyrights away to the journals if you can help it! At least ask for the right to post your work online if you want it to be freely available to the public. Some journals will agree.