[10364] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Grumpy old cybrarians and Adobe Acrobat
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Karen G. Schneider)
Mon Jul 1 21:49:44 1996
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 1996 15:21:27 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Karen G. Schneider" <kgs@bluehighways.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
As long as PACS-L oldtimers are venting spleens (kind of a disgusting
notion, anyway...) I am running into a problem with Web sites and public
access. The problem is the increasing prevalence of Adobe Acrobat (PDF)
files as the sole format of files on the Internet, and in some cases, on
CD-ROMs.
I am not "anti-pdf"; I am not anti-any-format, no, not even shredded and
flattened tree products. But as a librarian/cybrarian/whatever,I am
focused on getting information to The People.
Those who tout PDF files tell me how many different readers there are, how
Netscape 2 has a plug-in for PDF,how NS 3 will read PDF files on the fly,
etc. What I am finding, however, is that in the real world, where most of
us operate, users come to web sites with far less elaborate software and
equipment than the PDF promoters assume. When people--students, city
employees, consultants, the general public--come into our library, quite
often what they want to do is get some guidance from us on what's out
there, skim it briefly, download what they like to diskette and take it
with them to read. Even though we have generous free-printing policies
(and a Kinko's across the street, where people can sign docs out on a day
pass and really go to town), our visitors are (I think rightly) so intently
focused on the "gathering" process, pulling together resources they can
read and reflect on later. That's why they make that special visit to our
library. And oh yeah, one 10-cent diskette is a better use of energy and
resources, imho, than piles of paper which may or may not be useful.
But quite often users are returning to computers which are older, using
some other browser and/or do not have Internet connections. They can
handle text, some graphic files, and even html files (some folks like to
save the html and load it as a local file from a browser--perfectly
understandable behavior). But PDF requires the Acrobat reader. Widely
available, yes. Widely available for funky old dos boxes? No. Always easy
to install? According to the frustrated calls from our users, who are
often out of our physical reach as they struggle with this, no.
At least with the "analog" patrons we can come up with creative solutions.
The other day we had a call from someone VERY far away requesting
significant chunks of a particular document. I started to point out that
it was on the Internet, since I am aware they have just acquired this
access, then thought better of that as I looked at the site. It looked
like a ransom note patched together with html, text and PDF files, with the
real meat of the site strictly in PDF (appended with a nice little
discussion explaining that readers are available). They really needed
this. Should we spend a lot of time, which at the moment we were short of,
explaining about PDF, about the reader, about the URL for the reader site,
etc.? Well, we happened to have spare paper copies, which we bundled up
and sent to the requestor. Sometimes we can explain all about Acrobat and
that's enough. Other times we have to balance this against the need to
answer an information request as quickly as possible. And it feels very
strange to be doign all this explaining for something as "simple" as
reading a document on the 'net.
Then there is my favorite CD-ROM. Documents which in their native formats
are close to plain-text are translated to PDF files, then placed on a
DOS-based CD-ROM. So to access these documents, you have to quit Windows,
since the CD doesn't want to run under a DOS window, start up the CD-ROM,
find and save the PDF files, exit the CD-ROM, open up the reader in
Windows... I began wishing for an affordable PDF-to-html-or-text converter
so I could translate the (public domain) products and put them on a
website. At that point lies madness (or opportunity?).
Finally, what really trips my trigger is that when I ask webweavers and CD
developers why they are providing documents in PDF, they invariably
emphasize the "nice formatting," but the vast majority of documents I have
seen, for our needs, anyway, were very simple text documents with a minimum
of graphics and images. Maybe it's ease of production--in which case, I
recommend exporting to plain text, which at least can be read by the people
who often most need it.
Maybe I'm completely off-course here. Maybe I shouldn't be worried about
city workers with XT machines, or about printing stacks of paper because
you can't read a file, or about using a whole lot of user education to
reading a file format on a medium designed to make document-access
synonymous with document-discovery. (All of this, btw, reminds me of the
old days, when we taught people how to use archie, ftp, extractors and a
suite of rustic tools to take a peek at a document they were interested
in.) Maybe I should be focused long-range on curing every economic ill and
circumstance that means users do not have equipment equal to that used by
website designers, and spend less time worrying about the immediate
information needs of the people we serve.
I guess if I thought it was *just* PDF, I would shut up and color. But in
the Old Days, at least, there was a concept fashionable with some of us
that information wants to be accessible. Now there is a sort of noblesse
oblige rampant on the 'net, in my grumpy old mind at least, where folks
coming in with old equipment, character-based (or simply non-NS) browsers,
slow modems, and little or no access to user education are simply trampled
over as site designers indulge in onanistic, bandwidth-sucking,
browser-specific, hoi-polloi-be-damned webpages that are most definitely
not focused on getting information to the people. I'm not talking about
specific sites; I'm talking about an attitude. Today it's PDF, frames and
75k graphics with no text equivalents; tomorrow it'll be something else.
Gimme that old-time religion; it was good enough for me!
------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen G. Schneider * kgs@bluehighways.com * schneider.karen@epamail.epa.gov
Author, The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-Schuman@icm.com)
Director, US EPA Region 2 Library * Cybrarian * Columnist, American Libraries
Visit our library at http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/
These opinions strictly mine!
