Perhaps it was missed, but the article was written by a professor. The point isn't that all humans in the world would be able to comprehend (or even care) about the contents of the book. The point is that they should have access to it, and the professor (who supposedly cares deeply about what he/she studies / writes about) should want all humans in the world to have easy access to it). Something that is easy to achieve, but apparently not happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
Imagine where academics could be if, for example, people like Ramanujan had access early in their career to all of the most important ideas in their field of interest.
The more obscure an idea or field of study, the harder it's going to be to get it into the right hands.
It's weird but true that it's often cheaper for me to make an ILL request through my local library than it is to get a copy from the publisher. The only difference is that ILL request may take a week or three to fulfill.
Yes, ILL works through public libraries and international public libraries. I volunteered with ILL in Santa Fe, NM and handled requests from Central America. I now live in a small city in Sweden and the closest library to me - 4 blocks away - handles ILL requests. Which I've used.
But my point is that ILL was put into place to keep people from having to fly "to some obscure state University" to read someone's "magnum opus". Adding the internet doesn't mean that older solutions to the problem no longer exist.
I may be mistaken on the above, but Google and Facebook (among others) have initiated large projects to bring internet access to all humans on the planet. I have not heard of similar projects (on similar scale) to bring more libraries to the world's population. (maybe I've missed this).
I agree it's with the best of intentions that Inter Library Loans exist, but it seems quite dated in its thinking and really I see no reason to perpetuate this model. There are plenty of technologies out there these days which would allow digitization of media without consequences of rampant piracy.
Absolutely true. Yet not that relevant. Data transfer cost isn't a major factor.
The journals in my fields are all electronic. They no longer have paper distributions. As a result, the library no longer needs to store a physical copy, and people can retrieve a copy from their office instead of spending the hour to so to find it in the library and photocopy it.
Great savings, right?
This also means that the publisher, as copyright holder, can enforce access restrictions. For example, I (as the member of the public) can use the chemistry library of a large university about an hour away to get online access to some of these journals, without paying an extra fee. However, I am not allowed to print or make copies of these articles. Once upon a time, when everything was in paper, there was no way for the publisher to make that restriction. Precisely because information transfer is cheaper, it's now possible for the publisher to have more fine-grained control.
As a result, ILL services have gotten worse. The rise of internet-based document retrieval services with limits on public (non-student/non-staff) access has meant that modern library users may need to travel more now, in order to visit a library with a given journal subscription, than 25 years ago, when an ILL request would have been possible.
See http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/how-copyright-... for "The Digital Paradox: How Copyright Laws Keep E-Books Locked Up." Quoting from it:
> If a student in Freiburg wants to read the hard-copy version of a book from the university library in Basel, he or she can simply order it via an interlibrary loan. But if only an electronic version is available, interlibrary loans are generally not an option. The student has no choice but to climb into a train and head to Switzerland to read the book on a university computer.
This sounds like the European version of the scenario you presented, only it was solved with the 'quite dated' ILL system, and exists with e-books.
In passing you highlighted the underlying reason. The publishing companies would like it if the laws and technology were set up so that making a copy of a journal article at a library is "piracy" (I prefer the term 'copyright infringement'), unless they get paid for making the copy, and they as copyright holders should be in charge of determining what the price is. (The ILL system addressed copyright payments through RAND-like copyright clearance agreements.)
Technology which makes it easier for copyright holders to control their copyright makes it harder for people to use the same materials. Either worthy people without the funds can't get access to a paper or there is 'rampant piracy'.
I think, from the little I have read about this (with regard to the issues we've discussed here), academics in general is kind of screwed up given the power structures in place.
This might sound like a broad generalization, and perhaps counter-intuitive, but I think for academic institutions to optimize themselves, they need to be thinking about how to re-arrange the incentive structure to align with incentives that drive a professor to write books and not with incentive structure of the markets. For example I think within the realm of academics it makes total sense to move toward a "pay for the person, not the product" model.
With electronic distribution of the media, you get almost zero-cost of production and distribution (except of course for the time the author spends writing the book). This theoretically allows the industry to figure out how to cut the middle men and move those savings to the "talent" instead of finding more ways to bureaucratize the system further, eating away at the salaries of those who are producing the material in the first place. However, given the power structure my hunch is without an "(r)evolution" within those industries professors will continue to get a fraction of what they deserve.
To get back to why I joined this thread, do you accept that your scenario of having to visit a state university library in person to read someone's "magnum opus" in book form is unlikely enough that it is more fanciful than meaningful?
As you are also not an academic, I instead offer a better scenario. Many Masters and PhD dissertations are deposited in the univeristy library but otherwise unpublished, and even un-indexed. For some of those you may have to visit the library in person to see a copy or even learn that it exists.
No, you absolutely do not have access to "all publications" - for example, you cannot ask the Library of Congress to send you their copy of the Magna Carta. Some things are too bulky, expensive, or fragile to ship. Remember though that you asked about some academic's "magnum opus", which is unlikely to be restricted that way.
No, not all public and private libraries are members of the OCLC. A search of http://www.oclc.org/contacts/libraries.en.html gives 15K OCLC members and 63K participating libraries around the world. The library at the National Museum of Mysteries (see http://web.randi.org/swift/paranormal-themed-festivals-bring... ) is not listed as one of them.
Remember though that your scenario concerned a state university, and those definitely are members of ILL.
"Technically one could argue that I have "access" to those books."
Yes. Though 'technically' you have access even if you have to fly to the Vatican library to see something in person. I would add the qualifier "relatively low-cost". It's costs me about $12 to get a copy of a journal article though ILL when it costs me about $35 to get it directly from the publisher. The main difference is that I need to wait a week or two. Books, oddly enough, are free.
And can't purchase extras if they wanted to give some away to people who they might want to collaborate with, etc.
If it doesn't end up being a book or article or in some way shape or form in writing, that the professor wants anxiously for every human in the world to read about, then chances are it wasn't worth writing about anyways.