DKA : Tobias Grote-Beverborg

[Tobias Grote-Beverborg]

At 18:02 27.01.1997 -0500, D.K. Agencies (P) Ltd. wrote:
>From: D.K. AGENCIES (P) LTD.
>
>Dear Dr. Grote-Beverborg,
>
>I am in receipt of your email sent to the members of Indology 
>concerning my long emails to the group containing book-lists.  I 
>fully agree with you on the fact that it is a painful work to
>download the long emails and putting them in the trash box 
>immediately after finding that they are irrelevant.  I, being a 
>member of a couple of mailing lists, find it very time consuming 
>even at my end.
>
>I am not sure about the status of internet and telecoms in 
>Dusseldorf, but you will be surprised to know that the 
>monopolistic supplier of Internet connections to business houses 
>and individuals in India, VSNL, had about 60 telephone lines only 
>in Delhi till about two months back.  They have recently been 
>upgraded to 214 which is also not sufficient to cope up with the 
>traffic.  These phone lines are terribly slow at times.
>Furthermore, some email providers (only emailing facility) charge 
>for every kilobyte, even if it is incoming.
>
>We, at DKA, have always considered ourselves as information 
>providers  rather that being mere booksellers.  It may be of 
>interest to mention here that we catalogue over 5,500 Indian 
>Publications every year of academic interest in English language 
>alone, which is close to 250% as compared to our National Library 
>in Calcutta.
>
>Considering them as advertisements would have been appropriate  
>for sure, if :
>
>		DKA would have floated information on new books 
>		without having a relevance to any prior communication.
>
>		DKA would have floated information on commercially 
>		viable publications only.  You might have well noticed 
>		that we sent offer for books which were priced at one 
>		dollar or two.  You will appreciate that those items are
>		published by those who respond very seldom to your
>		communications / orders and thereby we always loose in 
>		such order (not to talk of any profits). 
>
>		DKA would have floated information on available books only.  
>		We had mentioned books dating to 1970s and 1980s (some of 
>		them are long out of print as well).  The purpose was not to 
>		obtain orders but to give a comprehensive information.  I 
>		am sure many of those books would be available in the
>		library of researcher's own organisation or inter-library 
>		loan.
>
>It was very interesting for me when I received communications  
>about more than 20 different titles out of 58 books on Andamans.  
>More interesting was the fact that those  were neither from 
>Catherine Fox nor Columbia Univ., the originator of the query 
>on Andamans.
>
>We had a very long in-house discussion on the problem, as we 
>ourselves would not like INDOLOGY to be a commercial platform in 
>any manner, and at the same time not deprive the researchers and users 
>of the relevant information. An idea which popped-up during that 
>discussions was to reduce the book-info for transmission to INDOLOGY 
>to <title, statement of responsibility and price>,  While this will 
>certainly reduce the size of emails from DKA (and we have no objections 
>in doing so), in my personal view it makes it look more like an 
>advertisement due to the lacking information, bibliographic and Library 
>of Congress Subject Headings. 
>
>Please excuse me if my letter hurts your feelings and also for being so  
>long. I have put my views in a very straight forward and frank manner.  
>And would like to have your valued views.  We have always been guided by  
>people like you.
>
>I am not sending a copy of this communications to the LIST, but 
>please feel free to do so if you find it appropriate.
>
>Kind regards,
>						Yours sincerely
>						Surya P. Mittal
>						surya at pobox.com
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>
>
Tobias
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                                //OM//
                        SARVE BHAVANTU SUKHINAH/
                         SARVE SANTU NIRAMAYAH/
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                        OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI//
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Tobias Grote-Beverborg
Theodorstr. 370, 40472 Duesseldorf, Germany
ph/fax: 0049-211-6581306
e-mail: grotebev at rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/4957
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