[SCC_Active_Members] RE: the Quirks in Reviving CS books

[Bernard L. Peuto]

SCC friends

Having gotten within 1 hour some excellent suggestions and opinions  I am
asking for more ... Thanks for participating.

Bernard

-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Feigenbaum [mailto:feigenbaum at cs.stanford.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 10:42 AM
To: Bernard L. Peuto
Cc: 'Gust, Kathe'; 'SCC active'
Subject: the Quirks in Reviving CS books

Dear Bernard and all,

Bernard's idea is a good one. I just want to remind those who may or may not
have participated in the ACM contest/survey, that there was an important
quirk in the survey.

Books that are still in print were not eligible, even if they are
"classics." An example is the  1963 "Computers and Thought" that was edited
by myself and Julian Feldman.  I asked McGraw Hill to return the copyright
to me and Feldman, and then we donated it to the American Association for
Artificial Intelligence.
AAAI Press and MIT Press then reprinted it as a "classic". So it is not out
of print, and therefore was not eligible.

That may have happened in the case of several other "classics". For example,
Knuth's famous books on the Art of Programming are still in print (and sell
vigorously, I think).

Anything we can do to augment Bernard's suggestion so as  to handle these
quirky cases?

Best wishes to all, and continued congratulations on the great effort by the
volunteers and the CHM staff,

Ed Feigenbaum

p.s. another issue: what about setting up a CHM Press, similar to what the
AAAI did. Then people can donate the copyrights to "classics" to the CHM and
the CHM can choose to republish (sooner or later). I am guessing that MIT
Press or Stanford Press would be willing to enter into a publishing
partnership as MIT Press did with the AAAI.

We would need an editor of the CHM imprint.  A volunteer could easily do the
job.