Magazines - the paper kind

[railfancwb]

Anyone else remember going to a library - large city or university one - to research something in old magazines? Usually for a term paper for which the class instructor required citations from X magazine articles. Sometimes just because of personal interest.

 

Go to a work area with table and chair and shelves of books - Readers Guide to Periodic Literature or similar title - which indexed most magazines published in a year. Find articles which sounded relevant, write down the information, then go to a reference librarian who would go into the “stacks” and pull the bound volumes which had those articles.

 

It has been decades since I had occasion to do such. With the internet, Google Books, magazine publishers digitizing their material, other third parties digitizing magazines, I wonder how many libraries still offer this capability.

 

 

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[railfancwb]

Learned that “Readers Guide...” and kindred publications are still available.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readers'_Guide_to_Periodical_Literature

https://www.hwwilsoninprint.com/readers_guide.php

And most of the early editions have been digitized.

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000641605

*****
So... who currently or recently has used the “Readers Guide...”? And how successful were you at finding the articles the index pointed you to?


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[Historian]

I still get a couple of paper magazines a month.  The NRA's rifeman and QST magazine.   Used to get quite a few others but over the years let them slide for a lot of reasons.

Anyway:  Libraries are changing.   Lots of information is going electronic.  My local county library has about 100 magazines you can check out, and sometimes keep, online.  Some fo them quite interesting like Out Door Life, Field and Stream and some wood working magazines.  I'll admit F&S isn't want it used to be. 

Our library has a gigantic collection of digital books that can be read online or in person.  

Sadly the number of traditional books is slowly being reduced and you can see empty shelves.

People don't read as much as they used to but heavy readers such as myself are reading more.   (I average about 40 books a year).

[tous]

When my generation passes, there will be no more magazines, no more large buildings full of books.

No young'un is going to take the trouble to drive to a building, have to work to find the information they seek when they believe that every fact known is two taps and a swipe away on the damned device grafted to their hand.

I still get American Rifleman and I subscribe to the Smithsonian Magazine and the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.

I love the feel of a magazine or book, the smell of them, the vivid color of the photographs, that I can take them into the bathroom and not waste time whilst eliminating waste.

 

When I was a lad, nearly everyone subscribed to Look, Life, Time, The Saturday Evening Post and especially Reader's Digest.

They were the chronicles of our lives.

Edited April 24, 2019 by tous

[railfancwb]

I only subscribe to magazines of hobby interest now that I’ve retired. A major interest is the area of railroads and trains - full size and model. Most of the publishers serving these areas now offer digital and paper subscriptions. For some, take either version and the other is about $10/year more. Others only offer digital as an add on to paper.

Some offer archives on DVD for $ or by subscription on the web. Those on the web can be updated each time a new issue is published. Those on DVD are static.

Mother Earth News offers an annually updated DVD archive Vol 1 No 1 through the Vol just ended for a reasonable amount

As subscribers move to digital only, the USPS will lose more revenue.


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[SilverRidge01]

Recently at an airport awaiting my flight to board sitting in the waiting area, just for kicks, I decided to count how many people had paper reading material and how many had electronic. Got 39 people who were reading counted b4 we started to board the results are the sign of the times, only four outa the the 39 had paper, newspapers, magazines, books, the rest all electronic iPhones, iPads etc etc , heck all the outdoor magazines and books I read are available for subscription or on the net through kindle or individually ....paper book stores are a dying business and shortly they will be phased out, a thing of the past, our kids will say, remember when we were youngsters they used to have stores that sold reading material, time marches on, the technological age we now are a part of is changing the way we live ...

[janice6]

13 hours ago, railfancwb said:

 

Anyone else remember going to a library - large city or university one - to research something in old magazines? Usually for a term paper for which the class instructor required citations from X magazine articles. Sometimes just because of personal interest.

 

Go to a work area with table and chair and shelves of books - Readers Guide to Periodic Literature or similar title - which indexed most magazines published in a year. Find articles which sounded relevant, write down the information, then go to a reference librarian who would go into the “stacks” and pull the bound volumes which had those articles.

 

It has been decades since I had occasion to do such. With the internet, Google Books, magazine publishers digitizing their material, other third parties digitizing magazines, I wonder how many libraries still offer this capability.

 

 

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Yes.  All my work for my whole career required citations.

[janice6]

5 hours ago, tous said:

When my generation passes, there will be no more magazines, no more large buildings full of books.

No young'un is going to take the trouble to drive to a building, have to work to find the information they seek when they believe that every fact known is two taps and a swipe away on the damned device grafted to their hand.

I still get American Rifleman and I subscribe to the Smithsonian Magazine and the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.

I love the feel of a magazine or book, the smell of them, the vivid color of the photographs, that I can take them into the bathroom and not waste time whilst eliminating waste.

 

When I was a lad, nearly everyone subscribed to Look, Life, Time, The Saturday Evening Post and especially Reader's Digest.

They were the chronicles of our lives.

Some years ago, my son (another Engineer) came over and noticed my data library.  He asked what I had that for.  I explained, painfully why.  He laughed and pointed out to me that all data manuals were now on the Internet. 

I threw them all away.  I have some reference texts and technical books I kept for nostalgia reasons.  I also have one Semiconductor Physics book only for a paragraph on one page, where the recognized expert in the Semiconductor field  stated why there would never be a Silicon based semiconductor. 

I remember this "Expert" at times.

[tous]

I can't throw anything away.

I have all of my old textbooks from college and even some of my father's textbooks.

Electrical engineering in the tube era. 

 

I used to go to library sales and buy old science textbooks, just to read what they were saying when the books were current.

Very interesting.

 

I still have my green IBM S/360 and yellow IBM S/370 reference cards; just in case I  might need them.

[Citra47]

5 hours ago, tous said:

When my generation passes, there will be no more magazines, no more large buildings full of books.

No young'un is going to take the trouble to drive to a building, have to work to find the information they seek when they believe that every fact known is two taps and a swipe away on the damned device grafted to their hand.

I still get American Rifleman and I subscribe to the Smithsonian Magazine and the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.

I love the feel of a magazine or book, the smell of them, the vivid color of the photographs, that I can take them into the bathroom and not waste time whilst eliminating waste.

 

When I was a lad, nearly everyone subscribed to Look, Life, Time, The Saturday Evening Post and especially Reader's Digest.

They were the chronicles of our lives.

And when the younger generations computers fail to work and there is no longer an internet ……………………………….. there will no longer be knowledge.

[Historian]

9 hours ago, Citra47 said:

And when the younger generations computers fail to work and there is no longer an internet ……………………………….. there will no longer be knowledge.

There are still some of us....who bind books for a hobby and replace old covers.

Paper is a joy.  i read a lot of electronic material   But prefer an old book.

Moby Dick....is a book to hold.  A manual of air conditioning repair is fine electronically delivered.

[Rizzo]

16 hours ago, tous said:

When my generation passes, there will be no more magazines, no more large buildings full of books.

No young'un is going to take the trouble to drive to a building, have to work to find the information they seek when they believe that every fact known is two taps and a swipe away on the damned device grafted to their hand.

Believe? What they believe doesn't have anything to do with it. With the exception of classified/Top Secret gov stuff that you wouldn't find in any public library anyway, every fact IS known on a person's Smartphone (NB: I didn't say "your" Smartphone because judging by the way you speak of them, I'm not sure you even have one...)

And that's what I find to be really bewildering. One would think that an engineer- of all professions an engineer, whose job is to metaphorically build tomorrow, as I think you yourself once said- would stand in awe of the ability and ease of having literally the history of the world in something that fits unobtrusively in one's pocket.

And yet you snort derisively and brusquely brush off what is arguably one of mankind's most incredible feats of innovation and technology as "that damned device grafted to their hand."

Why is that?

 

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by Rizzo

[Moshe]

On ‎4‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 8:14 AM, railfancwb said:

 

Anyone else remember going to a library - large city or university one - to research something in old magazines? Usually for a term paper for which the class instructor required citations from X magazine articles. Sometimes just because of personal interest.

 

Go to a work area with table and chair and shelves of books - Readers Guide to Periodic Literature or similar title - which indexed most magazines published in a year. Find articles which sounded relevant, write down the information, then go to a reference librarian who would go into the “stacks” and pull the bound volumes which had those articles.

 

It has been decades since I had occasion to do such. With the internet, Google Books, magazine publishers digitizing their material, other third parties digitizing magazines, I wonder how many libraries still offer this capability.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I used microfiche, and for published hard copy material primary sources.  Magazines weren't in the realm of study.  They were around mostly for entertainment, which maybe the exception of JAMA. 

[tous]

5 hours ago, Rizzo said:

Believe? What they believe doesn't have anything to do with it. With the exception of classified/Top Secret gov stuff that you wouldn't find in any public library anyway, every fact IS known on a person's Smartphone (NB: I didn't say "your" Smartphone because judging by the way you speak of them, I'm not sure you even have one...)

And that's what I find to be really bewildering. One would think that an engineer- of all professions an engineer, whose job is to metaphorically build tomorrow, as I think you yourself once said- would stand in awe of the ability and ease of having literally the history of the world in something that fits unobtrusively in one's pocket.

And yet you snort derisively and brusquely brush off what is arguably one of mankind's most incredible feats of innovation and technology as "that damned device grafted to their hand."

Why is that?

 

I confess to being somewhat of a curmudgeon and quasi-Luddite when it comes to the use of those damned devices.

Technology, in this instance a smart phone, has no moral component, however, how they are used by us does.

One of the first things one learns in the sciences, most often the hard way, is that a collection of facts, a pile of data, do not a sol

ution make.  Evidence and results are used to form a conclusion, they are not the conclusion.

 

I suggest that the handheld devices, while they are a means to rapidly collect facts, do little to hasten forming a valid conclusion and quite the opposite, encourage folk to mindlessly stare at little or nothing or import while the wonders of the Universe are there to behold.

 

Consider that you need a building to solve a problem.  Simply acquiring a stack of lumber and a keg of nails, regardless of how rapidly, doe  not mean that you have a house.

 

How many young'uns would rather observe the night sky and ponder the construction of a galaxy than view yet another cat video or trade meaningless quips with people whose name and character are unknown?

 

I do wish that handheld devices containing the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics was around in my youth.  Dang book is 27 feet thick and weighs 50 pounds.

Yes, I realize that some of my time is spent here, trading meaningless quips with people I don't know.

In my defense, I don't find cat videos interesting.

Don't tell Rabbi Cat.  

Edited April 25, 2019 by tous

[railfancwb]

I used microfiche, and for published hard copy material primary sources.  Magazines weren't in the realm of study.  They were around mostly for entertainment, which maybe the exception of JAMA. 

I remember microfiche but mostly microfilm (for newspapers). Magazines for me included Journal of Accountancy and other accounting, statistics, and economics publications whose names I no longer remember.


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[tous]

Did any of your accounting professional journals ever explain why the abbreviation for debit is 'dr?'

[Moshe]

I had a ream paper box full of printed microfiche, along with primary sources in Spanish and English regarding Military Intelligence on the Mexican Border.  The skirmishes, Revolutionaries, shots fired, battles, all of it in about 330 pages.  Though some pages were mostly footnotes.  The joy of 1997.  Back when you saved your material on 3.5 inch disks.

[Moshe]

6 hours ago, Historian said:

There are still some of us....who bind books for a hobby and replace old covers.

Paper is a joy.  i read a lot of electronic material   But prefer an old book.

Moby Dick....is a book to hold.  A manual of air conditioning repair is fine electronically delivered.

I prefer paper books to electronic media any day.  I would not want to fondle the older manuscripts with gloves and specialized air conditioning unit.  Though, that is what archival units are responsible for maintaining, unless there is a wealthy collector.  I am fine with a reprint volume, as long as the primary material is adequately reprinted.  For instance, the Rawick Slave Narratives.  I don't need the original WPA printed books from the era they were generated.  However, as I have pointed out in other threads, I had an appreciation for the fact that the former slaves were documented, along with their narratives about what actually happened while in bondage.  Modern media seems to portray every red neck on the planet owning slaves in the South.  However, that was not accurate, nor within the reach of the average person.  Wealthy famers would own slaves, and did not like harm coming to them, because they were an expensive investment.  The focus of that that Senior paper for me, was to study the religious aspects of slaves.  More often than not they adopted the religion of their owners in public.  However, in private there was a lot of African traditions of hexes and fear of magic and so forth in private.  Almost like the voodoo you find in the State of LA. They were also forbidden to make a lot of noise in their own private services in their quarters, so they actually had essentially pot yelling.  They would pass around a pot to mask the instinct to be loud in their traditional practice.  Sort of a suppressor for the desire to make loud noise.  1996 is when I did a 20 page article for my American History assignment.

[Mrs.Cicero]

I like writing in the margins of my books.  I can't do that on my phone nearly as easily.

[Moshe]

I liked text books, especially if you had a blathering professor that couldn't find a point, even if it meant finding his manhood.  So, I would skip class, read the text, highlight the important aspects, show up for exams and make an A.  It annoyed the blathering professor so much, he instituted an attendance policy because of me.  I would let me not have a point for an hour while I doodled on some paper and took a mental break.

[railfancwb]

Did any of your accounting professional journals ever explain why the abbreviation for debit is 'dr?'

If they did I missed or forgot.

Likely as not for symmetry with cr.



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[railfancwb]

I prefer paper books to electronic media any day.  I would not want to fondle the older manuscripts with gloves and specialized air conditioning unit.  Though, that is what archival units are responsible for maintaining, unless there is a wealthy collector.  I am fine with a reprint volume, as long as the primary material is adequately reprinted.  For instance, the Rawick Slave Narratives.  I don't need the original WPA printed books from the era they were generated.  However, as I have pointed out in other threads, I had an appreciation for the fact that the former slaves were documented, along with their narratives about what actually happened while in bondage.  Modern media seems to portray every red neck on the planet owning slaves in the South.  However, that was not accurate, nor within the reach of the average person.  Wealthy famers would own slaves, and did not like harm coming to them, because they were an expensive investment.  The focus of that that Senior paper for me, was to study the religious aspects of slaves.  More often than not they adopted the religion of their owners in public.  However, in private there was a lot of African traditions of hexes and fear of magic and so forth in private.  Almost like the voodoo you find in the State of LA. They were also forbidden to make a lot of noise in their own private services in their quarters, so they actually had essentially pot yelling.  They would pass around a pot to mask the instinct to be loud in their traditional practice.  Sort of a suppressor for the desire to make loud noise.  1996 is when I did a 20 page article for my American History assignment.

Thanks for mentioning the Rawick Slave Narratives. I had heard that WPA compiled such, but you inspired me to look it up... on the web using my hand held device.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/

A number of the narratives seem to have been collected in “Yankee” states. Do you recall whether those being interviewed in those states had been slaves there?


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[Moshe]

Well, the WPA project was long after slavery had ended.  It was recollections by freed slaves.  When you are discussing 1936-38, the Civil War was long gone.  So, it makes sense that as freed people they migrated all sorts of places.  But, honestly, if you were a freed slave in the 30's would you want to still live in the South?  I wouldn't.

Back in 1996 the University had the original tomes, that I worked from.  We couldn't check them out, so it was a lot of library and photocopying.  Any topic you could imagine could be gleaned from there.  I was working on a philosophy degree that included a study of various world religions as a flyby.  So, I wanted to combine the two topics, and find out what their religious point of view in private was, versus the public image.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Moshe

[devildog2067]

It took me a long time to switch to primarily electronic media consumption, but I'm almost fully there.

I get my newspapers every day on my iPad. It's the same content that the WSJ, NYT, Washington Post and Chicago Trib (plus the Economist) used to deliver to my doorstep, except now I don't have to be home to get it, I don't have to cart them around, I don't have to fold them all weird to read on the plane or train, and I don't generate giant mountains of single use paper that go into the recycling stream.

All of my favorite books are now on my Kindle, which slips into a pocket of my laptop bag and is waterproof. When I go to the beach I can read it sitting in the ocean and not worry about getting it wet. I can also store more reading material than I'm able to read -- which used to be a problem on trips. I can read a dozen books in a week if I'm on vacation.

I still prefer paper for reading reports (though I might just bite the bullet and get the one of the huge e-ink tablets or something similar) and I still prefer textbooks for reference material, but other than that the only real reason to use actual dead trees is nostalgia. Electronic is better on almost every dimension of usability, except the ability to mark up the paper (that's never been a habit of mine, but totally understand for those who work that way why electronic is inferior).

 

[janice6]

20 hours ago, Mrs.Cicero said:

I like writing in the margins of my books.  I can't do that on my phone nearly as easily.

I can't write on a printed page of a bound book.  I just can't.  I also can't dog ear them.  I make liberal use of post it notes for markers.

But when the presenter passes out copies of his research paper I write all over that damned thing.