the scibrary
|a science library
We live in a glorious age of information where access to books and journals is free and open to everyone across the globe. Scientists publish all of their research material in open notebooks, and all publications are submitted to open access journals, which in turn are indexed by freely accessible abstract databases.
Ha! The last time free information could be found was when Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. We live in a despicable dark age of despotic publishers who force outdated copyright laws upon us, committing heinous copywrongs. Journals are locked behind corporate firewalls that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for subscriptions, and indexing databases cost even more.
Even public domain works are being digitized by publishers and sold through subscription access. When enough libraries clear their shelves of public domain works naively believing patrons can still obtain these works, the publishers will seize control of all knowledge. Subscription prices always go up. Subscription prices only go up. The consequence of allowing publishers to dominate scientific information is that research will only be possible at large corporations and universities. Small businesses, independent researchers, under-funded schools, and small budget start-ups will be effectively barred from participating in any type of scientific or technological endeavor.
There is a faint glimmer of hope within this dark void of greed. There is a growing trend among scientists toward open access journals and open notebook science. Large scale digitization projects like Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) are undermining the foundations of traditional publishers by making digital works freely available.
The Rogue Science Library, or Scibrary, exists to provide access to important books on energetic materials, chemistry reference works, and selected chemistry journals. The Scibrary also serves as an index to book digitization websites, open access scientific material, and related digitization efforts.
"An hour in the library can save you several hours in the lab," so the saying goes. Replace "library" with "Internet" and the opposite is usually true. The best resources for scientific information continue to be books, and the best books are not books at all, but ebooks. Ebooks are a rare and precious commodity on the Internet, not unlike intelligent conversation and websites free from advertisements.
The scientific journal is the definitive primal source of information. Every tidbit of scientific knowledge contained in books is ultimately derived from a journal article. Every journal article shares a proud tradition of cross referencing its sources back to earlier journal articles in an unbroken chain of succession.
Why have a website if you are not going to use it in furtherance of your own ideas and interests? I am sometimes capable of writing on topics in a logical and persuasive manner despite being highly intelligent and college educated. As much as I try to avoid politics and mass media issues, occasionally a subject ferments within my mind until a delicious distillate of pure wisdom and literary genius emerges. Either that or I prattle on endlessly until I forget the original topic.
Some people have information that fits well within the purview of Rogue Science, and they want to present their writing to the world on a venerable and popular website without the hassle of establishing their own. What they get instead is a page on Rogue Science . . .