Quick explanationIt
costs me money as well as time to run this site.
If it has been useful to you, please consider donating a dollar or two....
IL
EST INTERDIT À MES ÉTUDIANT[E]S
DE CONTRIBUER FINANCIÈREMENT À LA GESTION DE CE SITE
(My students
have to know they are not allowed to donate to this website fund!)
Explanations
Quick explanation
That's why I ask you, if
this site has been of any use to you, to consider donating
to help cover the costs of running it.
How does this online donation system work? What is
PayPal?
Donations go through the PayPal® system. You click the Make a Donation button at the top of this page and fill in whatever amount you want to give (click ? to change currency from Candian $ to US$, €, £ or ¥). You can sign up there and then for a PayPal account if you don’t already have one. (It's worth doing and very useful — and, no, I'm not paid to advertise!). Once you have made your donation, you will receive an automatically generated ‘thank you’ email message from this site and, from PayPal, detailed notification of the transfer.
Personally, I find PayPal both secure and useful when buying online because neither my credit card nor my bank details are revealed. PayPal explain it much more attractively themselves. As long as you receive less than $650 US dollars a month through their system, it doesn’t cost anything. Yes, that’s how they seem to make their money: by charging the seller, not the buyer. Since I certainly do not expect to be receiving $650 US in one single month, there is no added cost for you or me with these donations. Hidden costs only occur when you buy something online from a company bringing in more than $650 per month.
Why on earth would anyone want to donate to this cause?
The majority of site visitors (around 150 a day in May 2005) are not my students. Judging from the comments I have received, including these opinions, this site seems to be of interest to a surprising number of people with whom I have no contact and for whom I have technically no responsibility.
There are not many sites ‘out there’ which cover the ground of this one. I put some effort into making it as useful and as interesting as possible. I try to keep the site simple, uncluttered, unglitzy, utilitarian and, most importantly, free from the blight of consumerist propaganda (‘advertising’). In short, I am led to believe that this site is a good thing not just for me and my students.
It costs money to run this site. The indexing/search facility, used currently about 60 times a week, is really useful and professionally run, but costs several hundred dollars (US) each year. Web space doesn’t come free, either; nor do the various bits of software I need to run the site.
I can just about afford to pay out of my own pocket to run this site as it is now. However, if it is to include useful resources like audio and video illustrations, not to mention my bibliographical database (over 8,000 keyworded titles), or my database of sheet music and recordings (c.20,000 titles), I will need to pay for help and for radically increased disk space. I will not be able to do all the work or to cover these increased expenses without help.
Surely a university professor earns enough to pay for this site?
Currently (2005), yes, I do, although I don’t necessarily agree that I should have to finance something of use to general public out of my own pocket. But that’s hardly the point.
One main problem is that when (and if) I retire to whatever extent (and I can do so pretty soon, if I so choose), I won’t even be able to afford this site as is. The other problem, already mentioned in italics, is that I won’t be able to afford to expand the site to include really useful research resources.
OK, by tax deducting some of the costs, I can recuperate about 20%, no more, becasue my university is supposed to make space available for its professors, their research work and their course materials. Indeed the Université de Montréal does provide this service, but it has several drawbacks (see below).
The indexing/search facility, used currently about 60 times a week, is really useful and professionally run, but costs several hundred dollars (US) each year. Web space doesn’t come free, either; nor do the various bits of software I need to run the site. Add to that the radically increased amounts of server space necessary for housing audio and video examples (see above, in italics).
It would also be good to be able to pay a research student to some of the work involved in maintaining, expanding and improving this site. I don’t have the time to do all that.
Why not
use the Université de Montréal server?
A good question, because, yes, a lot of site content is compatible with what ‘ought’ typically to go on a university server (course materials, articles, etc.), so why not use the services provided? Eh? Come on! (I hate it when people say ‘kmaaaahn’ like that, as if no other point of view were conceivable.)
Why not
pull in some money from advertising?
For me, this is not so much a matter of avoiding the clutter, annoyance and vacuous stupidity of most advertising as of an unshakeable conviction in the intrinsic evil of consumerist propaganda (‘advertising’, ‘public relations’). Don’t get me started on this, please! Read this instead.
How much
is anyone expected to donate?
No-one is expected to donate anything to the running of this website. However, if it is has been at all useful to you, and if you are not registered as a student at the Université de Montréal, please make a donation: $1, $2, $5, $10, etc. — whatever you think fit. $10 a year from 60 visitors, or $5 a year from 120 visitors, or $2 from 300, etc. would, for example, just about cover basic current running expenses.
I’ll post results on this page around New Year 2006 to let you know what, if anything, has happened!