financial aid/Barnes&Noble
Dear all-
Thanks for the interest in the topic that Bill Grant has brought
up with regard to financial aid for 'Medit-Plants'.
For clarity's sake:
The Medit-Plants discussion group is sponsored by Dr. Dave Burger,
Chair of the Department of Environmental Horticulture at UC Davis.
Since he feels the goal of the group is aligned with the current
educational direction of the Department, he agreed to sponsor our
forum. There is no ongoing charge for this service at this time.
For information about Dr. Burger, see:
http://envhort.ucdavis.edu/dwb/dwb.htm
The Medit=Plants web site is currently supported pro-bono by
Paul Smith of Support.Net. While techincally separate from the
Medit-Plants discussion, much of its content is derived from that
e-mail forum and of course the development of its pages falls
along similar lines and the forum's activity. Significant non-
profits affiliated with the Medit-Plants web site are, of course,
the Mediterranean Garden Society, and recently, Pacific Horticulture
Magazine. The site's orientation allows for inclusion of other
non-profit or profit participation. At this time, no profit
participation has occurred. The original financial model was
the profit participation would pay the costs, allowing non-profit
to come in for free. Someday, ISP costs will need to be covered.
Regardless of the current ISP pro-bono support, there are indeed
various costs in the development of the Medit-Plants web pages,
regarding images, supplies, software, text transfer, and not the
least of which is my own time.
The funds Bill is talking about are for the Medit-Plants web site.
In order to continue to build pages of useful and interesting
information, some sort of subsidy will be needed. The site has
garnered much praise and interest so far, but no capital as yet.
BTW - I queried Barnes&Noble with some people's concerns about
junk mail, etc. The responded in no uncertain terms that they DO
NOT use information from book purchasing partrons for mailing lists
or junk mail ads, either for themselves or for sale to others.
They seem genuinely sensitive to this problem and their patron's
privacy. They have also provided me with some information about
international purchases which I will research and report on soon.
Sean O.
