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I have mixed feelings about this question requesting an electronic version of a paper which appears in a book. It is not really a math question per se, but the topic may be of interest to a research mathematician. To give the OP the benefit of the doubt, I assume he checked his local library and cannot find a copy of the book. But why he doesn't request interlibrary loan is beyond me.
@Willie: I violate copyright for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so this doesn't really faze me.
@Harry: I don't think it is so much the copyright issue that bothers me (though I did take a quick search which result suggest that no-one has bothered to scan that yet). Unlike questions about long out-of-print monographs which was never formally published and cannot be found in libraries, I don't see how there can be a meaningful answer to this question.
(I guess I am also having a bit of a curmudgeonly streak of "these whippersnappers, back in my day I had to digitize the papers I want with my own two hands!".)
Maybe we should tentatively allow this question, but tell the OP that he has to agree to go do any interlibrary loan request, then post a scanned version online, if no one answers positively in the meantime.
By the way, a while back, I was looking for the paper of Swan about Néron Desingularization, and when I asked on MO, I got e-mails from two people, one of whom was kind enough to scan it from a copy of the book that he owned, and another one who offered to send it to me a week later. Then again, I also tried to check it out of the library, but they said that the next time the copy would be in the library was November 21 (I asked the question in mid-october).
My feeling is that such questions should be disallowed. MO is for the asking and answering of interesting mathematical questions. It is not a research help site. "Questions" like this one, requesting copies of papers or books, are usually not interesting to anyone except the "asker" and just represent noise to the rest of us.
I am sure that everyone here has several dozen papers which they would like to have as electronic copies. If we all posted questions asking for them, MO would be flooded and nobody would bother visiting it.
Perhaps there is a niche for a "paper exchange" website (though, for legal reasons, perhaps not), but IMHO MO should not be it.
I downvoted and would vote to close if I had 168 more rep.
I just voted to close the most recent such as “off topic”, but I admit I was tempted to put “spam” instead. I wonder, is it too harsh to actually flag it as spam?
I wonder, is it too harsh to actually flag it as spam?
I think you should flag a post as spam/offensive if you agree with the statement, "This post is sufficiently harmful/misguided that it should be deleted and penalized." A spam flag comes with a downvote from the community user, and if a post accumulates 6 flags, it's deleted and the owner is penalized 100 reputation.
I vote to reopen. Let's not turn MO into a site run by the most puritanical and prudish among us.
I hate seeing so much effort expended to prevent people from violating Springer's (or whoever's) copyright. These publishing firms are large enough to defend themselves.
@Harry: You seem to be the only participant in this discussion so far assuming it is copyright issues that prompts the closing. It certainly never crossed my mind when I voted to close.
Dear Harald, I'm saying that there is nowhere else that one could reasonably ask for such a scan, that it is of interest to mathematicians, and that it doesn't really do any harm, provided that the person in question looks for himself/herself on the internet and checks his or her university library. Interlibrary loans take a long time!
Further, MO has provided a place for graduate students who have not yet built up a network of colleagues at different universities to get the information they need. I get the feeling that most of the professors here are rarely forced to go through ILL (even the acryonym is sickening =p!) when in need of a paper, since they can e-mail a colleague and ask for a scan. Am I presuming too much?
@Harry: REAL PROFESSORS never uses ILL, since they already have the off-prints.
REAL PROFESSORS never use ILL, since they'd rather just spend the five seconds re-deriving the result.
REAL PROFESSORS never use ILL, when they so much as cough the library will put in a rush order for another (or new) copy of the book.
Visit realprofessorfacts.com for more REAL PROFESSOR facts. :)
But seriously, what's the point of re-opening this question when Thanos already did what you want someone to do?
I only voted to reopen as a show of solidarity. I have no problem with this question in particular being left closed, but I am against the precedent this closure sets.
Also, that joke went over my head =(.
Re the joke: Check out the precedents. Real programmers don't write Pascal. (They use FORTRAN, or assembler. They don't use debuggers either, since they are adept at finding bugs buried in a few hundred pages of core dumps printed in octal.) And the precedent of that one: Real men don't eat quiche. (I suspect google will turn up quite a number of hits for these, but being a real professor, albeit just an associate one, I find it beneath my dignity to do so.)
Seriously, though, I have never dared bother a colleague for a scan of something they have in their library but I lack in mine.
I was going to write something about slippery slopes and opening the floodgates to off-topic posts on MO, but I am late for a meeting so you will be spared my rambling thoughts on the issue.
Dear Harald,
I'm just asking why you would say that this question is off-topic. Certainly the paper is of interest to research mathematicians, and having a scan of it somewhere is of value to the mathematical community.
Seriously, though, I have never dared bother a colleague for a scan of something they have in their library but I lack in mine.
Just because you don't doesn't mean there's anything wrong with doing it, no?
Willie, actually, REAL PROFESSORS simply do not read papers and books, they write them. (This is supposed to have been an answer of Grothendieck to someone observing that the library at IHÉS was surprisingly small)
http://xkcd.com/378/
Actually, that was supposed to be a poor amalgamation of real programmer jokes and Chuck Norris Facts....
@Mariano: I seem to rembember that there was an important distinction he made.
I think it was something like: "We do not read books; we wrote them", which is to say that those at the IHES did not need copies of the books about Algebraic Geometry, since they were the foremost experts in the field and either they or one of their colleagues who wrote the book (and would have also been at IHES) could answer their questions with original manuscripts or just intuitive knowledge.
Dear Harry,
I don't know the original french quote, but I have always seen it translated as "we write them", which has a much more radical connotation then the one you are suggesting.
Best wishes,
Matthew
Dear Matthew,
I saw a discussion on another forum about this quote. I'll have to ask the person whose argument I'm paraphrasing.
Here's the relevant post from the nForum:
Please ignore the bickering on the rest of the page (bickering that I did not cause!).
I agree with Kevin. Having spent many hours in my youth copying papers from journals, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who don't seem to want to walk to the library to look up a paper. (If they were to explicitly explain in the question that they had looked in the library, and that their library didn't have said journal/book/etc., I would be more sympathetic.)
If they were to explicitly explain in the question that they had looked in the library, and that their library didn't have said journal/book/etc., I would be more sympathetic.
That's totally reasonable, and completely in line with my position.
Not that I'm worried or anything... I can't help but think of this thread when I read this bit of news.
Having had trouble articulating my take on questions like this, I would just like to quote Nate Eldredge from upthread:
I am sure that everyone here has several dozen papers which they would like to have as electronic copies. If we all posted questions asking for them, MO would be flooded and nobody would bother visiting it.
Perhaps there is a niche for a "paper exchange" website (though, for legal reasons, perhaps not), but IMHO MO should not be it.
and Matthew Emerton more recently:
Having spent many hours in my youth copying papers from journals, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who don't seem to want to walk to the library to look up a paper. (If they were to explicitly explain in the question that they had looked in the library, and that their library didn't have said journal/book/etc., I would be more sympathetic.)
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