A requiem for the reprint
One of my favorite things is a 161 page reprint of a 1929 paper by D.H. Linder published in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, called “A monograph of Helicosporous Hyphomycetes.” It has a brown paper cover, and when I got it the signatures had not yet been cut; the book had never been read or used. With wonderful drawings grouped at the back, it is a relic of a different time. 
It was published by the author’s institution, before scientific publishing was a big commercial concern. Over the years, I have seen many copies, some with the original paper cover, many rebound, some immaculate, others obviously heavily used, some autographed by the author. Imagine Dr. Linder receiving reprint request cards (no one would have dared use his first name) and responding with this impressive tome. Imagine getting this present in the mail, months after requesting it. Unlike most mycological books published today, Linder’s monograph was an original work, not a recapitulation or review of work published elsewhere. It was not carved into twenty smaller papers. And perhaps surprisingly, it is still useful today and is cited regularly.
I got it when I was an undergrad, and an elder colleague let me loose in his filing cabinets to remove reprints that interested me. There is nobody greedier than someone who has decided to start a reprint collection. At first, any reprint will do, even something from an unrelated field. It takes time to become discerning, to know immediately what might be useful, and what will only take up space. My reprint collection became a gluttonous monster that had to be hauled along whenever I moved. By some phagocytotic process, it absorbed several other collections from retirees and grad students who abandoned science. Now, the collection is confined to two filing cabinets, but inserting new reprints requires prying apart existing folders and cramming the new paper in… surely someone has invented some kind of special tool for this.
Once you have more than 20 reprints, organization is required. Most scientists file the papers by author, which is fine if you easily remember people’s names. The maintenance of the index card catalogues associated with many reprint collections consumed many hours, typing on manual typewriters, cutting and pasting in the old fashioned, pre-computerized way. My old office had a secretary’s nook just outside. In the old days, almost every scientist had a secretary, who counted among her tasks the filing and mailing of reprints, and the maintenance of the index card reprint catalogue. Lacking my own secretary, who would intuitively know how to do these things, I tried many experimental organizational systems for my reprint collection. Eventually, the collection reached a size where any further resorting was impractical. If something wasn’t in the expected place, there were always several other files to check. Misfiled papers showed up eventually, tucked away in the wrong file following some cryptic logic.
Sending and receiving reprint requests was a solemn ritual. Postcards with preprinted return postage labels were beyond the financial means of the average graduate student, and far too impersonal. We addressed our cards by hand, and transcribed the entire citation of the article requested. It was unthinkable to write “et al.” instead of the whole list of coauthors. Omitting the title was a sacrilege. And when the reprints finally arrived, usually addressed to Dr. FAM (although I had no such credentials), there was always a guilty thrill… should I write back and tell them?
Photocopies were never as satisfying as real reprints. For one thing, we had to pay for our own photocopies. Each grad student had a counter that plugged into the photocopier. We became adept at the subtleties of page reduction and squashing two pages onto one, before photocopiers did this automatically. Each page was 5 cents. For anything longer than five pages, a real reprint saved money, not to mention the infinitely higher aesthetic quality.
As photocopiers became cheaper and better, reprints started to disappear. A colleague told me that when photocopies became affordable, scientists stopped reading, planning to do that “later.” As The World’s Funniest Mycologist put it, he felt like his PhD should stand for “Doctor of Photocopying”.
We now live in a paperless scientific society and the pdf file rules the day. My laptop is crammed with them, most of which I have never read and probably never will. Now I have my own research budget but don’t spend money buying reprints or on postage to send them out (although journals try to sell me pdfs of my own work at laughable prices).
I’ve even got Linder’s 1929 monograph in pdf form. But who can be bothered to open this monster when the original thing sits on the bookshelf, still ready to serve?
When I was a student, I spent a long time photocopying Linder, and had it handsomely comb-bound with blue covers. Everyone knows that the rays emitted by the photocopier machine go directly into your brain and that you needn’t read the article after photocopying it. I wish the same was true of pdf files.
Yes, and I do have REAL, GENUINE reprints on thin sheets of wood decorated with a colourful mixture of various inks. But haven’t received a mailed with-a-nice-stamp -reprint request for ages… Anyone, eh ? Just for the old time’s sake ? Once in this century … : )
Perhaps we need to start a secret society. Start buying and sending reprints again, but only with real stamps on, and then only by surface mail in manila envelopes, not by courier in these puffy things filled with plastic bubbles or gerbil-shredded newspaper. Only for papers that are actually worth reading, though.
[…] First, of course, a few fungi. Like I said, mostly we found last year’s fruiting bodies and only one fresh mushroom. A few especially handsome microfungi turned up. At left, the helical spore of Helicosporium griseum (nice, since FAM was just talking about Linder’s helicosporous fungi). Also, a handsome zygomycete on deer poop, Pilaira anomala (yellow-grey pinheads), and the stately Thysanophora penicilloides (brown toilet brushes–forgive me). […]
[…] want is to sit down at the microscope, look at the slide, and go “WOW!!!!” As hinted in my ruminations on Linder’s monograph, and in Kathie’s BioBlitz post, the helicosporous hyphomycetes have been responsible for […]