Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 757.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 06:57:00 +0100
From: "Edward N.Zalta" <zalta@mally.stanford.edu>
Subject: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[Dear colleagues: Please give the following your most careful attention. --WM]
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A Funding Plan to Keep It Free
Library and Academic Community Action
* The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/ (SEP)
is one of the most significant and visible humanities projects on the world
wide web, serving millions of pages annually to readers worldwide (see
http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#access). The SEP has achieved its
current status by its special combination of advanced digital technology
and rigorous academic peer review. Our digital workflow technology not only
allows us to manage over 825 authors and 90 subject editors at a minimal
cost, but also organizes the SEP as a "dynamic reference work". In a
dynamic reference work, the authors are given the means to keep their
entries up-to-date, and all entries and updates are refereed before
publication on the web. The entries produced for the SEP are in-depth,
scholarly pieces which cover a variety of philosophical topics from war and
voluntary euthanasia to Nietzsche and Rorty. The scope ranges from issues
traditionally discussed by European and American philosophers, and we are
working to expand our listings in the areas of African, Arabic and Islamic,
Chinese, Japanese, and Judaic philosophy. These entries are of broad
interest, not just to philosophers but to anyone seeking a humanistic
perspective on issues that are important to the human condition. The
success of the SEP has been made possible by the volunteer efforts of an
internationally distinguished board of subject editors
http://plato.stanford.edu/board.html and authors who are among the top
experts in their fields.
* The SEP has been freely accessible since September 1995 because of grants
from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science
Foundation. However, this money will end in September 2005. So the SEP is
embarking upon a fund-raising plan on which we partner with library
consortia to raise money both from libraries and from private donors. We
hope to raise enough money in 3 years to operate off the interest. See our
Open Letter to Professional Philosophers:
http://plato.stanford.edu/fundraising/colleagues.html
However, the SEP is being read by academics in a variety of departments.
You can get a sense of how widely the SEP is being read at your institution
by examining:
http://leibniz.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/library/usage.cgi
* The largest group of library consortia, the International Coalition of
Library Consortia (ICOLC), has released, and circulated among its members,
a "Global Call to Action" in support of the SEP fund-raising plan. It
endorses the fund-raising plan that we have developed and asks libraries to
make fund-raising pledges. This Call has been endorsed by Rick Johnson, the
Director of SPARC. Copies of the document may be obtained at
http://plato.stanford.edu/fundraising/ICOLC-Call.pdf
Note that the funding plan asks for only 3 one-year contributions
(positioned as either "subscriptions" or a "contributions to the SEP
endowment") which thereby earn a lifetime of free access. The plan also
suggests that the libraries and academic departments might need to combine
resources during that time. Please consider whether your department can
play a small role in helping the library at your institution participate in
the funding plan. Suggested contributions have been set to account for the
fact that some libraries may not participate.
* We shall endeavor to keep the SEP completely free and open access during
our fund-raising drive, but if the free-rider problem undermines our
fund-raising plan, we may have to reconsider.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri May 07 2004 - 16:59:53 EDT