nigelw@cs.man.ac.uk (Nigel Whitaker) (02/15/91)
In his monthly posting to comp.lang.vhdl Thomas Dettmer provided a
list of books about VHDL. I have read some these books (Lipsett,
Schaeffer + Ussery, Coelho, etc.); there were also some I hadn't
heard of before. In particular:
VHDL, Doug Perry, 464 pages, 20 illustrations, ISBN0-07-049433-9
McGraw-Hill, Inc., ATTN: Charles Decker, Professional Publishing Group
11 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
Chip Level Modelling in VHDL, J. Armstrong
Pretice Hall, 1988, ISBN: 131331906
So off I go to the University library to see if they have them,
unfortunately they don't. Following the usual practice it's off to
the `inter-library loans' department to see if they can obtain it from
some other library (they usually get them off the British Library).
Inter-library loan requests were issued for both these books.
For both of these books I got the following response:
``The British Library do not have this in their stock
and will not be buying it as they consider it to be
out of their scope. Unfortunately, they know of no other
locations.''
This is the first time I have been told a book is `out of scope',
I don't know anybody who has also discovered a book (on any subject)
`out of scope'. I always imagined that the British Library stocked
EVERY book.
At the minute I am contacting the publishers, finding out how much
the books cost, and am attempting to get them bought locally.
I have been told that it is possible to appeal against
such decisions of the British Library. I imagine the more people who
think these books should be in scope the better. If you think that
these books should be in the scope of the British Library
(particularly if you are in the UK) please email me with your name and
postal address. I'll investigate further and might consider
organising a petition, should enough people reply?
What is the situation in other countries, has anybody
obtained these books through other libraries?
Any comments?
Could anybody provide brief synopses of either of these books, or
point to any publication which has reviewed them? This would be very
useful when arguing the `scope' of these books.
Nigel Whitaker --- nigelw@cs.man.ac.uk
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