Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 13:51:00 -0500
Subject: Re: Contentville, Vernacular literatures, etc


Hello,

I remember signing something for UMI in preparation for submitting my
dissertation, and I remember better all the "royalties" promised at the time.

Personally, I'd like to see all dissertations made freely available on the web.
For anyone. Lately, especially since our recent discussion on the regional
language literatures of India, I have been trying to write a long "reply" in the
form of a history
of Malayalam literature meant for anyone interested in getting a sense of the
magnitude of such literatures in old cultures like India, and I suspect
elsewhere.
The trouble is that for anyone located in the West, original books are out of
reach, so are the countless dissertations written by good souls, expending so
much time and energy. So I am all for someone, some company, even Bell&Howell (I
love them: they make movie-projectors! The most fabulous machine ever invented!)
to put out
everything out on the web.

By the way, here is my answer about the BIG question raised in the several
postings
by Eric, Radhika, Shanker, Prasannarajan, etc, on whether English literature of
India is superior to "18 regional literatures".

http://www.gotop10.com/KJ/malayalasahityam.html
I hope to build up this history of literature site and I welcome questions and
comments and harsh criticisms as work on it in the coming months.

May I ask scholars in other languges to contribute similar "answers"
accounting for the state of one or more regional literary tradition they can
speak for or speak about.

Thomas Palakeel


Danny Butt wrote:

> Always interesting when you think you're kind of on top of things then
> suddenly "hey! that's not supposed to be happening to us!". Fairly relevant
> to Maya Dodd's point in some ways :).
>
> Of course - sort of like Napster vs. home taping issue -  nothing's *really*
> changed: libraries often charge for making copies available to anyone But it
> certainly lets work circulate faster and in digital form.
>
> Radhika noted that many people try and turn their thesis into a book -
> sometimes with minimal rewriting. Although the theses have always been
> nominally freely available, they've remained relatively obscure and hard to
> get, and institutions haven't been trying to market them. Authors have
> basically been able to exploit this "distribution inefficiency" to
> "monetise" their content via book publishers. However, the rise of sites
> like Contentville seems to throw that model into question.
>
> My guess is that students are going to start paying a bit more attention to
> the intellectual property policies of the institutions they're signing on
> with. From my experience these have been more based on "gentlemen's
> agreements" and historical practices than what's in the policies. I'm
> certainly troubled by the thought of my current thesis-in-progress ending up
> being hawked in a less-than-sympathetic way by some contractor to the
> institution. OTOH, I don't see much I can do about it, and anyway the idea
> of this academic thing is that it's supposed to spread ideas, right?
>
> Interesting times in the academic intellectual property world! have more to
> say on this but I think Maya's thread is more important so we should
> probably get back on topic...
>
> cheers
>
> danny
>
> Elizabeth Deloughrey wrote:
>
> > Hi Folks:
> >
> > First, apologies for the length of this email. I have checked the UMI web
> > site and they have their own program to order dissertations on-line. I've
> > scoured through their news releases, web links, and company profile and see
> > nothing of Contentville even mentioned. UMI website:
> > http://www.umi.com/hp/Products/DisExpress.html
> >
> > If you have questions about the relation between UMI and Contentville, you
> > can email the president of UMI/Bell & Howell at
> > JoeReynolds-AT-bellhowell.infolearning.com
> >
> > A quote of his which is telling:
> >
> > Reynolds stated. "We will continue to expand our intellectual property for
> > the academic researchers of the world and will continue to offer the best
> > value for our customer's research dollar."
> >
> > I also found a completely uncritical press release which is very recent and
> > have pasted it below. Although it doesn't say as much, it seems the
> > Contentville president was faced with legal action if he continued to sell
> > others' works without paying royalities. He is lauded for "choosing" to
> > abide by the law.
>
> >
>
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