Re: Terzemian on the web

Paul Bennett quoted (someone, BP Jonsson?)
> >
> > You mean the folks at work will go after you for one more
> > line in a printout? By comparison at my uni library it is
> > formally forbidden to take photocopies out of 100+ y.o.
> > books, but they don't actually complain unless the book is
> > 150+ y.o. Not to speak of copying any book entirely, which
> > is strictly forbidden but completely ignored!
>
There _is_ a valid reason for that-- some of those old books are falling
apart, or will, if they're spread out on the copy machine. The binding will
break and pages come loose. The glue/sewing etc. in the bindings is decayed
or has totally given way :-))) No way to treat a book.

In the 70s, I did copy Matthes' Buginese Grammar (publ. sometime in last
half of l9th C); it survived. But when I tried to copy the library's copy of
his dictionary (1853) not only the binding but the paper itself began to
crumble (even more than it already had), and fearing I'd utterly destroy the
book I stopped after 20 pages or so of the several hundred. The last time I
looked, it was no longer on the shelves; the UM library did have a practice
of undoing old collapsing books and Xeroxing or microfilming them, so that
may have been in process. Last time I saw the Bug. Dictionary in an
antiquarian list, it was around US$200, and that was quite a while ago.

Many 19th C. scholarly works were printed on really good paper that hasn't
yellowed or gone brittle; sadly, Matthes' dictionary was not one of those. I
have a lot of cheap-o Spanish paperbacks from the 50s (Austral and Emecé
from Argentina) that crumble if you just look at them :-((((

The Mich. library had the rule that no dictionaries could be checked out;
but they didn't recognize "kamus" or "woordenboek/woordenlijst" or
"Wortschatz" etc. , so I had free rein with a lot of what I needed for
Indonesian work-- and Lord knows, there wasn't a great demand for them
anyway..........