I have grabbed the message of the C-H representative from the med-rel web
archives, here it is:
Caroline Howlett ([log in to unmask])
Mon, 21 Apr 1997 13:07:59 +0000
Thanks to Father Anselm Cramer and to Sophie Cretaux for their
messages.
We cannot provide commercially sensitive information on the costs of
production of PLD. We can say, however, that the conversion of the
printed volumes was achieved at the lowest possible cost, given our
demand for an extremely high level of accuracy in the conversion and a
comprehensively SGML-coded database that would not become obsolete
with the passing of a particular hardware or software platform. I can
assure both Fr Cramer and Mme Cretaux that we tested all possible
methods of conversion, including scanning and OCRing the printed
texts, but Migne's volumes are so poorly printed and their structure
so complex, with all the notes etc, that the most cost-effective
option by far was double-keying. The cost could then have only been
reduced by accepting a lower level of accuracy in the conversion, and
it's not difficult to imagine the responses of scholars to that.
Mme Cretaux seems to think bad management is the reason for PLD's high
production costs, and draws attention to the low cost of replicating
CD-ROMs. We'd dispute the first assertion, as this was a very well-
managed publication; we'd agree with the second, but point out that
the replication of the discs was a tiny element in PLD's budget
compared to the costs of converting the texts to machine-readable
form.
As for our pricing policy, we have been told more than once that if we
had priced PLD at one-tenth of the price, we would have sold ten times
as many. Would we really have made fifty sales in Austria, rather than
five; forty in Sweden, rather than four; or three hundred in Germany,
rather than thirty? It seems unlikely. We looked at many ways of
pricing the database but the model we adopted was the only one which
would enable us to cover our costs. We deeply regret that library
budgets in, say, France are so inadequate and so low in comparison with
other countries, so that PLD is, for example, more widely available to
scholars in Japan that it is to scholars in France, but I do not think
we can be blamed for this. One could argue forever about library
funding and publishers' pricing policies, but the fact that a library
cannot afford a publication does not automatically mean that its price
is excessive or that its publishers are pirates.
We also regard our complete list of customers as commercially sensitive
information, but we are always happy to tell scholars where the nearest
copy of PLD is to be found. The nearest set to Ampleforth is at the
University of Leeds; it's also available at the universities of
Newcastle and Sheffield. In Paris it is available at the Bibliotheque
Nationale, the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve and the IRHT.
On the matter of hardware and software platforms, the CD-ROM edition
of PLD requires a reasonably fast PC and Microsoft Windows. It's a
very large database and it won't run on an old 286 or similar. I'm
afraid that a Macintosh version of the CD-ROM edition proved
impractical for us to produce, for a number of reasons. The Web
edition can be used on PCs, Macs, and UNIX computers. As has been
noted earlier in this correspondence, we will be looking at other ways
of pricing the web edition, for example per-search or per-session,
which will enable us to provide still wider access to it.
Finally, a life of Migne, warts and all, was published a couple of
years ago. The author was Howard Bloch; its title was something like
'God's Plagiarist'!
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