[Air-l] access to papers online

[jeremy hunsinger]

On Oct 15, 2004, at 1:01 PM, Scott A. Golder wrote:

> Nancy Baym wrote:
>> The archives are only available to AoIR members. Access to the 
>> archives is a benefit of membership, not a component of conference 
>> registration. For information on becoming a member, visit the URL at 
>> the very end of this message. We realize that people who attend a 
>> conference but are not members are sometimes disgruntled with this. 
>> However, the archives include all five conferences we have had, not 
>> just the most recent one, and the membership fees are low and include 
>> a variety of discounts on journal subscriptions and books as well as 
>> archive access.
>
> I understand why multi-year archives are accessible to members only; 
> after all, AoIR is an organization that costs money to run and 
> maintain.
>
> However, I'd suggest that the reason conference attendees have been 
> disgruntled, is that AoIR's practice is wrong.  In my understanding of 
> how these things work (and I may be incorrect), when people pay to go 
> to a conference, they are paying for access to the materials that are 
> presented there.  This includes not only the live sessions, but also 
> the papers from those sessions (either digitally or hard copy).  Is 
> this something that maybe varies by discipline?

I'd say your understanding is not correct, because it varies by 
association.

we don't require people to send papers either, so even if you think you 
will get the paper you want, you might not, the authors may never 
submit it.
>
> Granted, if an attendee really wants a particular paper, it's pretty 
> easy to email the author for a copy, but this prevents casually 
> browsing through the papers.

that  is perfectly fine.
>
> I'm curious, what is the rationale behind the decision to not make 
> papers available to the attendees of the conferences in which they 
> were presented?

it is one of the few members benefits that we have, plus maintaining a 
website for each conference is much more work, than maintaining one 
website for members :)

these are my opinions of course, but then  I'm one of the people that 
has been maintaining these websites:)

the members website will be back up, in November and members will have 
access again then.

Jeremy Hunsinger
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
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