Finding old technical literature can be maddeningly difficult. There are many important papers that are not readily available as journals have gone under or access to those publications is limited despite the research being so old that copyright no longer applies, but thankfully there is a move to make older work more freely available. One such effort, just launched, is The Theropod Archives, a collection of classic papers and links to more recent ones. My hard drive has already become saturated with the available material and I'm sure there's more to come, so make sure you keep checking back for updates. If you have any questions about the archive, please contact Rob Taylor (theropod-archives AT comcast DOT net).
[For those of you who prefer knobby ornithischians, Ken Carpenter's Ankylosaur PDF Library has been up for a while now, and O.C. Marsh fans should check out Matt Wedel's collection of classic Marsh papers. Perhaps we'll see some collections of papers on sauropods, ceratopsians, and (those "cows of the Cretaceous") hadrosaurs in the not-too-distant future, too.]
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It's a good effort at distribution, but many of the PDFs that Rob is offering there are the result of a mass digitization project carried out by others.
Additionally, if it's aimed at being a repository, it needs to adopt a more aggressive approach to maintaining the data presented, such as keeping records of citations in a database. Rob is probably limited by his host provider in this case, but if he really wants to pursue this venture, there are other free alternatives.
I am dealing with a similar issue in keeping bibliographic records, and while I'm aware of possible solutions, I'm still trying to come up with a way to implement them.
Cheers,
This is excellent, thank you... at last I can decipher some of those odd scientific names!
*weeping openly in cubicle*
It's...it's so beautiful...
Much appreciate the great introduction! Nick Gardner raises some good points in his comment, and I wanted to take a moment to address them. I should make it clear somewhere on The Theropod Archives Web site that the vast majority of my collection has come through the good will of others, with only a scant few of my PDFs having been the result of my own digitization efforts. Most assuredly there is a database supporting the project (database design and management being what I do for a living), however at present, there is no connection between it and the Web site. As one can readily tell by looking at the source code, the pages are rendered as static HTML. Connecting the back end would indeed provide much greater flexibility, and I hope one day to take the project down that path.
Right now time is my biggest limitation, and at present I would rather devote what little I have of it to growing the site's content as opposed to investigating alternative implementations. All in good time, I hope!
Thanks to all for the feedback.
Regards,
Rob Taylor
The Theropod Archivist
No issue then as long as you're aware of it.
Cheers,