[Discuss] Spreading the word at the library

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

----- Original Message -----
> i attended Linuxfest Northwest for the first time this year and while
> here I picked up some free Linux magazines they had been giving
> away. One included a recent Knoppix disk and one had a couple recent
> versions of Ubuntu. I recently read through them so today I dropped
> them off in the Libraries free magazine bin. I was inside studying
> for about an hour in a half and when I came out both magazines were
> gone. My point is if any of you get Linux focused magazines from
> time to time you might consider donating them when you are done.
> Also if you have access to magazines but don't normally pick them up
> because you don't want to deal with rowing them away or storing
> them, you might consider grabbing them anyhow and then donating
> them.

I have a large collection of Linux magazines... and have most all of the Linux Journal magazines going back to issue #2.  They are all in my work office because my wife didn't like how much room they were taking up at home. Also Linux Magazine.  I didn't really keep up with the greatly overpriced glossy magazines from England although I have bought a few issues.  I don't know if I really want to give any of those away... but people can borrow them all they want.  When we had Linux Installfest type events (going back to when I lived in Billings... in the late 90s and early 2000s) I'd display all of the magazines on tables.

Linux Journal offers all of their catalog electronically... and I should have them all in one digital form or another.  They release an updated DVD every year with everything on it that they charge for.  Linux Journal has been available in PDF format since April 2005 (10+ years now) and those are easy to share.  I have actually emailed with with Linux Journal employees on the subject and they aren't completely against the idea of personal (non-public) sharing of their digital versions... especially if it leads to some new subscribers.  I've been a subscriber since 1997 or so.

Linux Journal hasn't been a print magazine for a couple of years now.  I also subscribe to the digital version of Linux Voice (an awesome magazine that gives back to the FOSS community with a portion of their subscription fee)... and have a cache of all of the MagPi issues... again in digital format.

Anyway, yeah... personal copies of digital content doesn't help random library users much... but maybe if we brainstorm on it some... we can figure out a way.  At the very least I've wanted to provide a "reading room" section on the MontanaLinux website for some time... but given then aged nature of my current Drupal install... and lack of time and energy to move to a more modern, mobile friendly content management system... I haven't made it a reality... other than some non-linked directories with index.html pages mostly serving as my personal backup.

As always Rob, thanks for bringing it up!

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406)388-0827 [home]
(406)994-3931 [work]