Dani
Abandoned AmericaThe fun thing about doing historical research as an individual unconnected with academia is the absolute constellation of different, ridiculously expensive paywalls you run into trying to get any info whatsoever
Aidan@AbandonedAmerica Information wants to be ... subscriber only
Bill Hooker 😷@AbandonedAmerica Someone has pointed you to LibGen and Sci-Hub, right?
@sennoma nope. Tell me more!
@AbandonedAmerica Well, these are legal grey zones. The conservative approach (e.g. what most librarians or lawyers would tell you) is to treat them as illegal file sharing. Wikipedia is fairly even handed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
and provides links and "See Also" resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
and provides links and "See Also" resources.
Eva Chanda@sennoma @AbandonedAmerica
Sci-Hub is great for sciences. Another thing to check is the digital resources of public libraries. Mine has access to New York Times, National Geographic, Press Reader (access to a variety of international newspapers & magazines), Eureka periodical search, and JSTOR, which gives you legal downloads of humanities & social sciences literature. It also has a ton of digitized photos & other historical resources for my province (Quebec). Best of luck!
Sci-Hub is great for sciences. Another thing to check is the digital resources of public libraries. Mine has access to New York Times, National Geographic, Press Reader (access to a variety of international newspapers & magazines), Eureka periodical search, and JSTOR, which gives you legal downloads of humanities & social sciences literature. It also has a ton of digitized photos & other historical resources for my province (Quebec). Best of luck!
Fade@AbandonedAmerica @echanda @sennoma I have definitely done the "Let me see if my university library will ILL that and then oops here's a PDF" thing for people before; but it's much easier for chapters than entire books, when it comes to old material not available in electronic form by default. Those they'll send me physically, but that's less useful for helping colleagues not in physical proximity.
Matthew@AbandonedAmerica
I heard the authors often do not get paid by those sites, and might give you a copy.
I heard the authors often do not get paid by those sites, and might give you a copy.
@mrblissett unfortunately when you're dealing with books 70+ years old there's not much they can do to help
@AbandonedAmerica
You can try getting a .edu address from a cheap college with research access.
You can try getting a .edu address from a cheap college with research access.
Marta Kvande@AbandonedAmerica if there’s something I can get for you via ILL, let me know
Andrew Benedict-Nelson@shandyist @AbandonedAmerica the Republic of Letters lives on
@shandyist what's ILL? Thank you!
eyvindur@AbandonedAmerica @shandyist Inter-Library Loan. It’s awesome. Because libraries are awesome 😀.
@eyvindur @shandyist oh! Right. I did check that 😕
@AbandonedAmerica @eyvindur since I’m an academic, the university library will scan articles & book chapters for free. It is indeed awesome.
Andrés E. Caicedo@AbandonedAmerica @shandyist Interlibrary loan
alex 
@AbandonedAmerica the even more fun thing is sci-hub
Brian Dear@AbandonedAmerica Like just trying to read a few dissertations and discovering, oh, that whole universe has been paywalled too, and I need to set up a budget to buy some. Or worse, you find a freshly-minted PhD who’s managed to keep their dissertation out of the public’s reach and only their uni library has a copy and you have to be uni faculty/student to access it (not that that stopped me, I just found someone who knew someone and presto, a pdf of the (lousy, turns out) secret dissertation).
@brianstorms yep. Watching our information ecosystem get increasingly fragmented and walled off sucks.
davdunc@AbandonedAmerica we humans just love to get paid!
Sandy Cyborg 🇨🇦🍁@AbandonedAmerica Refseek is a search engine that can be useful for research, it isn't as busted as google or duckduckgo so you get better results https://www.refseek.com/
@sandycyborg thank you!
N.@AbandonedAmerica Yeah. I hate it. I love researching things for the sake of knowledge and learning, but so much is inaccessible to me because I'm not an academic. I feel you.
@curiousmold thanks! Judging from the responses here it's not great for academics either. Just an all around lousy and frustrating system
@AbandonedAmerica I'm not sure where you're located, but I wonder if local libraries might be able to help.
Rai Aren 🖖✨📚🇺🇦
Eye of the Robot@AbandonedAmerica I guess this is how we pay for our mistakes these days?
Pete@AbandonedAmerica Being a Wikipedian gets me some free access, but it is definitely frustrating.