🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Cummins on reprint request cards:

>   I'm surprised that people still use reprint request
>   cards.  Any I receive get dumped automatically,
>   particularly if they obviously come from rich labs that
>   can afford to produce such luxuries.  If you are
>   genuinely interested in an article and don't want to
>   photocopy it, then write a personal letter to the
>   author. The only exception I make are for people from
>   poor countries with limited library facilities.  These
>   usually have the courtesy to write in any case.

How do you tell who is rich and who is not?  Am I rich?  Do you know my status
(grad student?  Postdoc?  Faculty?)  Does my institution provide photocopying
expenses to any of the above?  If I left "University of Washington" out of my
address would you know what "Friday Harbor Laboratories" are?  Is FHL rich?  How
far from the university library in Seattle am I?  Do you know my research
interests?  Do you know what journals FHL receives, and how well they match my
research interests?  FYI FHL is a marine sciences laboratory, and we receive an
excellent variety of journals in the marine sciences.  But my research has a
decidedly medical and biochemical slant to it, and we receive no medical and
only one biochemical journal.  FHL is on an island about  120 km north of
Seattle, and I must take a 1.5 to two hour ferry and then drive 1.5 hours
(traffic conditions willing) to get to the library.  Add to that the frequently
long wait to even get on a ferry, and the possibility of a day trip to Seattle
(at least in the tourist season) becomes vanishingly small.  Last week I had to
wait 4 hours to get on the ferry.  That  makes a trip to Seattle a 7-hour affair
(one way).  Although I can get the libraries in Seattle to send some journals up
here, this depends on availability.  Do I like to request reprints?  You bet!

Dave T.
_____________________________________________
David W. Tapley                       206-543-1484 (voice)
Friday Harbor Laboratories     206-543-1273 (fax)
University of Washington
620 University Rd.
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
<tapley@fhl.washington.edu>