I feel so old in saying “How I wish we had the learning resources kids have these days.” The Internet and the availability of information has, I think, has pretty much the same effect as, say the photocopying machine or the word processor. I just can’t imagine writing a 100-page thesis
Just last night, my younger university colleague, Raymond and I were sharing a few of the ideas that are quite interesting research areas for us language scholars. Then we came to the issue of access to the latest ideas and resources. How can one do relevant research when we’re still quoting 20 year-old materials.
Wikipedia is up-to-date but still questionable for most as a “citable” resource. But who needs Wikipedia if you can get the actual ebooks and book scans online for free? Sites like Gigapedia (which has been online for more than a year now, wonder why only very few UP people know about it) have a better catalog for recent books than local libraries.
Writing my thesis has been one expensive ride. Wanting to do it not only the right but ethical way, I’ve invested in software licenses and books and ebooks. The running total of my thesis-related expense is somewhere double what a UP instructor gets in a month.
But who else has that money to spend on academic books? Probably not your undergrad (though if UP undergrads can drive BMWs, maybe they can). If you’re an undergraduate working on a thesis where even the printing costs can drain your allowance, would you even bother with buying books or resort to other means of getting the same information without the expense?
Now we come to the more sensitive issue of ethics. Leaked ebooks and scans definitely violate intellectual property. Any self-respecting academic should respect IP.
And how different is it over photocopying – something that has been part of the UP culture for a very long time now? But if you’re in the third world where just one book costs thousands of pesos (and you need like 20-40 to work on a study) and it would take years for the university library to even get a copy, putting on that scholarly eyepatch really is the most viable action.
To paraphrase former UP President Dodong Nemenzo, piracy is the revenge of the third world. But should it also be the way forward for third-world academics? Talk about post-colonial.
Arr!
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