This really needs its own discussion so here it is:
timof5stars wroteIf I find myself within a day’s drive or short flight to the museum, I will certainly make the effort to go there. I suspect that the museum’s funding precludes any large scale efforts at digitizing their collection. Also there may be IP agreements that prohibit public sharing of information in the archive beyond that provided in a physical tour. Such “information hiding” is all too common these days.
I’ve thought about what interested individuals could do to contribute. It seems like a task much larger than any one individual. But lest we underestimate the power of thousands of individual contributors, I had originally predicted the fast and total failure of Wikipedia. And even if it doesn’t fail, I argued, it will never provide any useful information. As it turns out, I could not have been more wrong.
I had a similar attitude regarding open source software - it might result in a few interesting utilities but you were never going to get any enterprise-class applications out of it. Remove the profit motive and you will doom the project to a quick death. Not only did I turn out to be wrong again - on all counts - but it turns out that for some applications, most notably end-to-end-transactional encryption, open source software is the ONLY solution that can be proven reliable and safe. This has become known as a “Trust No One (TNO)” approach
Hmmmm a GNU Lock Project information…… interesting. I had some thoughts along those lines a few years ago. I think if we go to each lock manufacture and get a release of any and all old catalogs for scanning without alteration we could post the older catalogs online on the HoL as we wouldn’t be making changes. The issue would be the scanning.
http://diybookscanner.myshopify.com/
I found this kit a few years ago and I have been setting some money aside to buy one and the cameras. The cameras are getting cheaper and better. So my project for this idea is getting closer as I build money. Time isn’t much of an issue as I can give a few hours a week…. less game time in winter, as it is constructive. The main thing is I know of several people that have old lock books but the scanning might damage them if a flat scanner was used. It would be a crime to destroy a rare book just to get the scan.
The other side is GOOD pictures of locks. If someone lives near a lock museum and can get permission to take really good pictures of the locks out of the case or in a lock collection and any information that goes with that lock we could post it in the HoL side of the site so we can all look at all the locks. There are camera phones that are 41 Meg pixel. I am wanting to try one just to see how they do on closeup work. Even if I picked one up without the service I think this might be cheaper than some DSLRs.
But this all hinges on if Brian is willing for that much more stuff from an outside source. We would need to set a standard for any admissions to the “Collection”.
This site is almost a GNU project now…. wouldn’t take much to push it into that.
[unknown]
