Thomas,
I ask your advice whether you think that an automated translation with
any available software would be adequate to a technical work of this
sort (as you are much more knowledgeable than me in all related areas)?
Would you trust it instead of the original, or instead of a professional
edited translation?
As a comprehensive research library, my institution routinely buys
important non-English monographs in most subject fields. We might have
missed this one, but we won't, because I've just ordered it. I am not
sure if any US libraries have a truly comprehensive collection program
in library science, since the demise of the Columbia Library School
Library.
The difficulty for me, once I get the book, is that my German is not
really up to reading an entire book (my Ph.D. language exam in German
was a very long time ago). This underlines your point about the need for
translation. Librarianship is a field where there has long been separate
national traditions, but I think that period is past, or ought to be.
David
Thomas Krichel wrote:
>
> David Goodman writes
>
> > The traditional solution here is a traditional library. Some things
> > librarians can't do as well as we would like, but we do know how to buy
> > books and lend them to people.
>
> It would be a waste of resources for a book that is
> written in German, when there may only be a handful
> of people on campus who read that language. That brings me
> back to my earlier point about the automated translation.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thomas Krichel mailto:krichel_at_openlib.org
> http://openlib.org/home/krichel
> RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
--
David Goodman
Research Librarian and
Biological Science Bibliographer
Princeton University Library
Princeton, NJ 08544-0001
phone: 609-258-7785
fax: 609-258-2627
e-mail: dgoodman_at_princeton.edu
Received on Thu Jul 18 2002 - 14:31:29 BST