RE: REF: Online verses Print

Robert,

By experience, we know your buttons to press to get you on a soapbox. You
just found about a dozen of my buttons. However I will try to keep it short.
The information dissemination process is and will continue to be driven by
money. Right now the print oriented group within AIS has been effective in
suppressing the most useful information from being in the computer database
because they need the volume of publication high enough to support printing
the R&Is. They have done that by not letting the computer people publish the
new information in a timely manner. AIS has the same dilemma that you do
with your encyclopedia of price and volume. Too high a price means
inadequate volume means someone takes a loss. Just look at what AIS is doing
with The World of Irises.

Putting information on the internet is relatively very cheap. However there
is a major problem with most of that information, veracity. Anyone can put
anything on the internet without regard to accuracy. What iris people want
is accuracy via standards and peer review. Therefore they want an
organization (AIS in our case) to verify the information before it goes on
the internet. It is possible to do both print and computer database if the
problem is approached with cooperation and as a system. The above is not one
of AIS's strong suits. However, most of us would be willing to purchase a
bundled package of the printed R&I and the database for $15. Or maybe even
$17.

The solution is inevitable. The print oriented people will continue to die
off and the computer oriented will eventually overwhelm the few survivors.
Five years max. Five years is the same max I gave to printed colored
catalogs.

totally unrelated OBTW  Unfortunately the iris world will soon be losing its
best commercial garden (Leotas) web site to residential construction on the
garden land.

Harold Peters
Beautiful View Iris Garden
2048 Hickok Road
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
harold@directcon.net <h*@directcon.net>
www.beautiful-view-iris.com


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-iris@hort.net [o*@hort.net]On Behalf Of Robt
R Pries
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2004 12:47 PM
To: Talk Iris
Subject: [iris] REF: Online verses Print


Harold Peters wroteSecond point: Right now the print copy people control
the decision making process. Once there are enough computer oriented users
paying enough to control the decision making, we will not have the put up
with the current limitations being imposed by the printed copy people.

        Harold what you wrote interests me. As one who has spent the last 15
years compiling information for checklists, I am concerned as to whether my
final effort, of an Iris encyclopedia will ever be published. I certainly
see the value of online data, especially because of the search tools. There
are some things one can accomplish with a search/find that would take hours
getting from the printed word. But in the same way, I find a number of
benefits to having printed books also. Because I am trying to complete a
five volume encyclopedia, I ponder whether I will ever be able to sell
enough copies, to justify the printing, especially, if most of the material
could be retrieved from a Google search. Fortunately at the moment most of
the information is not available in that way. But if were, how many people
would buy the books. It is not that I am trying to make any profit. I just
want the books to be affordable. In order to provide them at a low cost a
minimum number of 50!
 0-1000
 must be printed.

        It also seems to me that if everything is on line, than what would
be the virtue in having an Iris society. I wonder about these things and am
concerned about how the future will evolve. I greatly appreciate online
services, but I also like having an Iris Society and printed matter. In my
mind, I have not been able to reach a conclusion as to whether they are all
compatible. I would like to believe that printed matter and online products
will compliment each other rather than compete. I would love to hear others
thoughts.

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