As long as you understand the extreme limitations of such research, you'll
do fine.  For one thing, you will have a hard time finding primary source
material, particularly if it is older than 3-4 years.  Historians will
never be able to rely on electronic records for the majority of their
research.

:     During imaging operations, the data were stored in a 3 kg, 2      
:     Gbit dynamic solid state data recorder

I had heard that Clementine flew with the most powerful computer before.
I believe that one of the main reasons was to operate its star sensors.
Previously, spacecraft looked for recognizable star patterns to orientate
themselves.  Clementine, since it was supposed to test ABM intercept
technologies, used a newer approach.  The idea was to take a picture of
whatever way the sensor was looking and then search through a large
database for a star pattern that matched it.  It required large memory and
fast processing speed.  They were only looking for stars of a certain
intensity, though, so it's not like the memory had to hold millions of
patterns.

DDAY

: Uh, actually the odds of finding primary sources (if you count things
: like the Rogers commission report, NASA procurement documents, the
: Congressional Record, etc.) are better on the net than in most (any?)
: libraries (true, this is true mostly for records from the last 3-4
: years).

But extensive research, for instance, that required for writing a book, is
not conducted in libraries, but in archives, and there virtually all of it
is paper.

: > Historians will never be able to rely on electronic records for the
: > majority of their research.

: Uh, "never" is a long time, and if you include internal electronic
: records as well as records publicly available on the internet, that
: might expand the scope somewhat, but I'll agree with the basic
: premise--that lots of things don't make it on to the net even in the
: present, much less in the case of events from a decade or a few ago.

First of all, the use of electronic message systems like e-mail really
dates only from the past 8 years or so.  Even then, I have the feeling
that it has not accounted for the majority of communications within the
White House or organizations (paper use has actually increased with
electronic communications).  So the simple generation of material has not
yet surpassed paper.  Second, many of these records don't get consciously
preserved.  Organizations like NASA are actively struggling with this
problem.  Other orgs, like the White House, are struggling to destroy
these records.  Finally, even when these electronic materials are properly
preserved, it may be a long time before they are made available over the
Net.  I have the feeling that many organizations will still want you to
come to their place and search the database from their facility.  I think
we're talking several decades at least before one could do serious
scholarly research of a RECENT subject solely from one's home.  As for
looking for materials before the mid-90s, you will always have to plunk
down the cash and visit an archives where all the paper is stuffed in
boxes.

DDAY

-----
Eric Smith               |  This was posted with an altered address to
erics@ netcom .com       |  thwart bulk email programs. To respond by
http://www.catsdogs.com  |  email, take out the ".remove.this" part.

In article <ericsE9IoAI....@netcom.com>, er...@netcom.remove.this.com
says...

In article <5k8ovt$96...@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu>, wayne...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
says...

: Hmm... maybe not contemporary historians such as yourself, but I can see it
: happening for some fields (medieval, demographic, intellectual, economic) in
: our lifetimes. For the majority of their research, of course - not all of
: it.

You lost me.  How can one do medieval research based upon electronic
records?  One of the biggest problems for any record keeping organization
is simply indexing things, let alone scanning them into a new format.  If
you go to a Presidential Library, for instance, you will find that records
from 70 years ago still haven't been completely indexed.  I doubt that
most of the people who read this group truly understand what an archive
looks like.  Imagine the vast warehouse scene at the end of Raiders of the
Lost Ark and imagine that all of those boxes are filled with paper...

DDAY

In article <5ka73r$cm...@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu>,
Dwayne Allen Day <wayne...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:

On Sat, 3 May 1997 22:57:35 GMT, Henry Spencer <he...@zoo.toronto.edu>
wrote:

Compression of textual images can be remarkably effective, especially
if one accepts some lossiness.  At 600 dpi, one might achieve lossy
compression ratios in excess of 100.  You could store more than
ten thousand pages of 8 1/2 x 11 text on a CD ROM, and more than
10^5 pages on a DVD.  (Perhaps the scanning and compression themselves
are too expensive?)  If you can do OCR, the compression can be even
higher.

See: "Managing Gigabytes" I. H. Witten, A. Moffat and T. C. Bell.
  Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994.

Paul F. Dietz (di...@interaccess.com) wrote:
: > For medieval history, the total corpus
: >of available records is small enough to make it realistic to hope that
: >they will pretty much all be online within the foreseeable (although
: >not immediate) future.  This is clearly impractical for more recent times.

: Is it clearly impractical?

: Compression of textual images can be remarkably effective, especially
: if one accepts some lossiness.  At 600 dpi, one might achieve lossy

I would advise anyone who is at all interested in this subject to actually
visit a document archive sometime.  I believe the Eisenhower Library alone
has something like 9 million pages of documents.  Now start adding up
libraries.  Start adding up document depositories.  Figure out how much it
will cost to do this kind of work.  Then look at the budgets these places
get.

DDAY

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