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In mid-1999 I wondered what minimum thickness of vacuum-deposited aluminum would reflect 90% of theoretical at a wavelength of 121 nanometers. My answer snuggles in the AIP Handbook of Physics, 3rd Ed. 1972 (American Institute of Physics). 70 nanometers gives 99+% reflection (with warnings about surface oxidation). A kindly act of charity posted this in news:sci.optics, but I was hot to look at the page myself. How silly it was of me - I was in Canada at the time.
The University of Victoria library is as physically ponderous as the largest compost heap in British Columbia, also on campus at that time. The library recently installed an updated, improved, and Officially spiffy Internet-interfaced "intelligent" search utility. Anyone across planet Earth can log into a "server is down" window. To find a journal like Rec. Trav. Chim. cited in a footnote, you can't. The system only swallows exact whole names, hence Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas (which is why the grotesque thing is abbreviated). The book of journal abbreviations is kept under physical lock and key in the Reference Section, and it will never enter the Library database because Victoria enjoys massive Socialist unemployment. Requisition a Librarian's Assistant.
You would think in 1999 a classic reference work dated 1972 would be on the shelf. They have the First Edition, published the year I was born, and plans to purchase the Second. A Second Assistant Librarian says so. That the Second Edition is out of print has crippled the UVic Library acquisition process, but the matter is being studied in biennial committee meetings as time permits.
The AIP Handbook is not on the shelf, the Library server was down the day (week, month) I looked, and the whole place is arranged by Library of Congress with no hardcopy Name/Number posted. It was off to the dead tree repository card catalog!
A computer interface is clean, like an exotic dancer doing her last song. You only see that which you seek (if that), mostly. A card catalog is dangerous, like looking under a nun's skirts. There is no telling what will be hanging from where. A seminal reference work in physics did not pull rank at the UVic Library. Hereafter follows some of the compost that did (with Library of Congress numbers in case you ever visit and the server is down):
Handbook of Moral Theology, two of them - BX1758 P713 and BX1758 K6. Fellas, the Talmud was there first; bigger, better, with copious footnotes, infinitely more intellectually rigorous, and extensively field tested. Six million Jews burned in Hitler's ovens while the Pope Pious XII and the Church of Rome looked on, smiling.
Handbook of Old Church Slavonics - P6623 H3. Who cares? Who could possibly care short of a bankrupt mentality trolling for a rancid Liberal Arts thesis topic against a Committee of five nostalgically senile Ukrainian Doukobhor professors?
Handbook for Proxemic Research - BF469 H28. I did some research here. Proxemics is the "anthropological reconstruction of visual communication modes." It is prolix bombastic illusory garbage written by people who cannot spell "semiotics.".
Handbook for the Study of the Negro, 478 pages - DT351 W89 Before you go getting all huffy, note that it was published by Negro Universities Press. One might imagine they were expert on the subject, or at least informed. Or more likely comatose.
Handbook for Settlers, FC38 C52. This is the corrected and updated 1964 Second edition, the First having been published in colonial times. It could be those typos killed a lot of folk who would have been otherwise better off illiterate, less the book and plus an extra hatchet. Too late. I smell "Masters thesis."
Handbook of Luganda - PL8201 P5. Luganda is the language of Buganda, currently on its 36th king (His Majesty Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II), Buganda, Gateway to Happy Happy Hell . Go ahead, be the fourth person to visit the website. The Web page is dated Tuesday, 25 June 2002.
Handbook of Vice Control - HV8067 P3. Not only do you need a note from your mother to see this baby, it is a meager 84 pages long. Contrast it with the richly embroidered 95 pages of The Handbook of Handbooks Prepared Under the Direction of the Historic Section of the Foreign Office. As stated previously, the only labor resource Canukistan savors in abundance is unemployment.
Handbook of the Ulster Question (1923) - DA990 U 46I8. I would be wary of believing anything in this tome. Then again, every Christ-besotted Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland should be forced to memorize the maudlin blather in its entirety, as penance.
Handbook of Marxism - HB501 B848. Primarily of anthropological significance, as in Proxemics of Reconstructed Multilingual Berlin Wall Graffiti of Proletarian Semiotic Significance.
Handbook of New Nations (1968) - D842 P4. Kindling.
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