[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

My, we've had quite a discussion here!

I made a comment in my previous missive about sharing a photo in a book with someone else, which I think struck a nerve with Ed. The law allows libraries to let their clientele do precisely this for research purposes.

What to one person may seem to be a photo of little particular interest may be one that holds a brand new piece of evidence for someone else, a real treasure.

I recently had such a happening. Actually, two. I now have a copy of Mark Proulx's Wings of the Black Cross, Number Nine. Now, I ordered this book because it was described as having photos of the Me 262. And, true to advertisement, there they were, although nothing particularly spectacular. As I thumbed through the book I did run across 5 photos taken at the end of the war at Kassel. There, at the top of page 29 was a rather unique photo showing the cockpit to a Ju 388, the fuselage to an Fi 103R manned V-1, 3 BMW 003 jet engines upside down, 1 Jumo 004 removed from an Me 262, and, the biggest surprise of all, 2 bare metal Me 262 tail sections. Now, were parts for the Me 262 being manufactured at Kassel? That was news to me. An uncorroborated Googled Internet forum suggested such, that parts for the Me 262 were being made at Kassel for REIMAHG Kahla. I'd sure love to pin that one down, as tracking down the manufacturing of the Me 262 is a particular fascination of mine.

But, that wasn't the only goodie that Mark had come up with. Three other photos showed photos of fuselages of the Junkers EF 126 Lilli. In one is also a P-61 Black Widow and a nose of a C-47, so these were definite U.S. photos, not postwar Russian developments. Heck, I never knew that any EF project ever saw cut metal. Now, I gave a call to my friend Manfred Boehme in Germany, who I know has an interest in such rarified developments, and he about flipped out, similarly unaware of any such production. In this case, I ordered a second copy of the book for him.

But, my point is that we, as researchers, are constantly trying to connect the dots. A photo may appear in one book and a photo taken from a different view of the same aircraft may appear in another and the two, when combined, provide a key missing when either photo is viewed alone. Thus, scanning and sharing to enhance our knowledge seems a very reasonable thing to do.

Is there a risk that I will detract from the sale of a book? Perhaps. Or, my friend may be so anxious to see the original for himself, that he obtains a copy. A printed book, in and of itself, is a deterent against duplication of the book as a whole. To do a really good job of it, you would need to literally tear the book asunder and scan each and every page, then reproduce it to sell to others. As has been pointed out, the market for our specific interests is not going to generally exceed a few thousand copies, making the whole effort of dubious value.

Now, as much as I like great photos in books, scanning them can be a really big headache. Photos in books are frequently, if not always, half tone prints and your scanner really loves to create barre/moire with them. You can try to fix this in a number of ways, with probably the most effective way being to scan at 1200 dpi, in which case you scan the individual dots. It's a slow process. You still end up with a half tone image. Yes, I can hear the argument that says, ah, but if we supply you an eBook, you might actually get a better image. True enough, if you provide it at high enough resolution. So, you then are faced with the question of do I allow the buyer to extract and make a nice print of the photo or do I lock it up, in which case it is look, but don't touch, and I lose the capability to share the photo, which is information, with other researchers. It is researchers, putting their heads together, as here at TOCH!, that can unlock mysteries that an individual researcher might not be able to accomplish.

As for reading a book on my computer or, even if I had an eReader, I fully agree with Ed's point of view that I hate reading anything lengthy on a screen. I write very long letters to Manfred and I guarantee you I don't proofread them on a screen - I print them out and mark them up with a red marker. Doing such on a screen is an unmitigated pain in the ass, although I have done so once for an author who asked me to proofread his book in .pdf format. I did it, but it was painful.

A book is to be held, to be enjoyed, to be thumbed through, to work back and forth through. I rarely start at the beginning. I find the subject matter of greatest interest and dig in. If I want the preliminaries, I'll go back for them. If it is a well referenced book, I'll be back and forth between the text and the chapter notes. I want to know if the author has done his research. Where did he get his material? Does he have a citation to support a specific claim? That means a lot of back and forth. That could be very painful with an eBook.

Regards,
Richard