Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
2 - What's wrong with this library, August 1988
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by relativity, since no information is being conveyed.
I first heard this joke from Rudolf Peierls in 1961. Since then the size of Physical Review has doubled, doubled again, and is on the verge of completing its third doubling. Physical Review Letters is nearly as big as Physical Review was in 1961. The journals of other physical societies have undergone comparable expansions, as have the numbers and sizes of the commercially published physics journals.
I was recently asked to address a group of Cornell alumni and librarians on how the library is used by a typical physical scientist. I did point out that they had selected a distinctly oddball specimen, but they persisted. So to give them a sense of the calamitous conditions we have created, I went systematically through the current periodicals section of the Cornell Physical Sciences Library to count how many journals I felt I ought to look at but didn't. My criterion was stringent: a journal made my list only if it would be downright embarrassing to admit that I never looked. I had to be able to imagine a colleague responding to my confession with amazement: “You never look at X?!” Counting only once those with multiple versions (A, B, C,…) I still found 32. In one case, uncertain whether an admission that I never looked would occasion a blush or merely a nervous giggle, I randomly opened a random issue and found an article I had not seen before, expanding interestingly upon earlier work of my own. That information had not been conveyed.
It is in this context that we must view the resistance of many scientists to current efforts by library administrators to make draconian cuts in their subscription lists. Keeping up with everything is driving the libraries into bankruptcy. Early signs of this problem and how physicists might respond surfaced over ten years ago. My colleague Ken Wilson and I, physics department representatives on the library committee and therefore conscious of the looming catastrophe, responded to announcements of two new physics journals by writing a letter to Physics Today announcing that our library could not afford any more subscriptions.
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 9 - 15Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016