Python and p2p

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Chris Keyes (chrisk at nipltd.com):
> 
> Quite agree... I'm lucky enough to have a large university library which 
> is free for me to use. I've just done a search on the index 
> (http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Library/resources.shtml).
> 
> A search in book titles for "PYTHON" returns no matches
> A search in keywords for "PYTHON" returns one hit for:
> Lutz, Mark. - Programming Python. - Sebastopol, Ca; Cambridge : 
> O'Reilly, 1996. - (A Nutshell handbook). - 1565921976

I don't want to speak for your library, or for librarians in general,
but when I was one, and when I was being trained as one, almost every
librarian (by this I mean someone with a master's in library science,
not the students hired to help for the summer) was anxious and eager
to provide reference service to library patrons.

Part of that reference service involved accessing widely-shared
holdings lists, such that the catalog of the current library was not a
limiting factor, but a starting point.

Loans of those books can almost always be arranged between
universities, and requests for books that are not in the collection
almost always make a difference in collection management policies.

In some ways, the card catalog and online public-access catalogs have
been worse for libraries than anyone ever dreamed. Now people tend to
see the library as a self-serve affair, and rarely consider asking a
reference librarian for help.

If you haven't tried it, you might. Maybe I was misled: maybe library
service outside the US and Canada really does suck.

All this said, I don't think it's a bad idea to get python books on
P2P networks. I don't use P2P software much, though, and when I do, my
firewall has the outbound port blocked by default anyway. So, it
wouldn't help much if I put it into my "upload" directory.

I should note tho, this wasn't my idea. I was merely reporting what
the original poster said to me, via (accidentally) private email. Ooh,
that was something of a breach of etiquette, wasn't it? But I do
endorse the idea, I just can't help with the execution.

--G.

-- 
Geoff Gerrietts <geoff at gerrietts net>          http://www.gerrietts.net/
     "Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies." 
      --Voltaire, on his deathbed, when asked to renounce Satan