Why on earth would anyone want to donate to this cause?

The majority of site visitors (over 100 a day) are not my students. Judging from the comments I receive about it, including these opinions, the 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.

Not many websites cover the ground of this one (do any?). 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, is really professionally run and used around 40 times each week, but that costs a few hundred dollars everyyear. Web space doesn’t come free, either; nor do the various bits of software needed to run the site.

I can 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 my database of sheet music and recordings (c.25,000 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.

Can’t a university professor afford to pay for this site?

Currently (2008), yes, I can, 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 real problem is that whenI retire in the autumn of 2009, I won’t even be able to afford this site as is. The other problem, already mentioned, is that I won’t be able to afford to expand the site to include other useful resources.

OK, by tax deducting some of the costs, I can currently 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).

Where does the money go?

The indexing/search facility, used currently about 40 times a week, is really useful and professionally run, but costs a few hundred dollars each year. Web space doesn’t come free, either; nor do the various bits of software I need to run the site (see also here).

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 or the money to do all that even now.

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.)

I couldn’t use the university server to post paragraphs like the previous one because it doesn’t look academically 'serious' and because opinions like mine on opinions lurking behind populisms like ‘come on!’ do not make a serious academic impression either, even if I hold my own opinion quite seriously.

Other reasons for not using my university''s computing services are:

• They run quite an unwieldy system (multiple passwords, user-IDs, gateways, etc.). That means extra time.

• On the UdeM server, everything is, rightly, in French while my I.T. terminology is all in English. This linguistic barrier slows down work on my site.

• Although teaching materials for students at my university are an important part of this site’s content, many files are documents which do not relate directly, if at all, to commitments at my university.

• I must adapt to the corporate ’look’ of the university’s website when I infinitely prefer this kind of utilitarian aesthetic with a very low level of superficial gloss. I also think that black screen presentation, though a tiny drop in the ocean of environmentally less unfriendly measures, is preferable to the corporate-looking white-background screens that university administrators, in their inscrutable wisdom (!), seem to favour.

• I can’t utter any ‘contraversial’ political opinion on a university website. For example, I was once asked to remove, from my clearly labelled Political page, a photo and a report of shocking and important events not covered in the bourgeois media. Call me pompous or pig-headed, but I’m not prepared to sell my convictions about truth or justice for the price of free disk space on a university server. ‘My grandma used to say “if you don't stand for something you’ll fall for anything”.’ (Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televized, 1968).

• I sometimes have to upload short audio extracts of music under copyright to my website so that students can access pieces of music used in teaching and research. My university fears the risk of legal action if music under copyright is found on their server. So do I on this site, but I minimise the risk of legal action by placing such items in a restriced-access folder whose user-ID and password are made available only to students on the relevant course. Besides, as a private individual, I am less likely than a well-known university to be pursued for breach of copyright [about music copyright and popular music studies | about copyright on this website | about copyright, YouTube, teaching and research].

Why not use MySpace®™, facebook®™, etc.?

• These are personal contact and chat systems not designed for the dissemination of adademic information. Anyone wanting such information would have to 'join' or sign up' (i.e. register).

• These systems contain consumerist propaganda ('advertising'). See next section.

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 live in an OECD nation and are neither unemployed, nor an imporverished student, nor registered as a student at the Université de Montréal, then please make a donation: $5, $10, or whatever you think fit. $10 a year from 50 visitors, or $5 a year from 100 visitors would, for example, cover current running costs. Since I first posted a request for donations in 2005 only one person has contributed. It will be difficult to keep this thing afloat if things continue like that!