Posting Crosby & Schaeffer Answers Online

[beatus vir]

I emailed Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers over a week ago and haven't heard back from them, asking if they had any objections to my posting the answers to Crosby & Schaeffer's An Introduction to Greek online. I'm working through that book (slowly but steadily) and think it would be helpful to me and of value to others if I blogged about the process and even posted the answers to the exercises online. It's my understanding the book is in the public domain (originally from 1928?). If anyone knows of any legal issues that would prove a stumbling block, please let me know. The book is used in some college courses, but I don't think that's reason enough not to post the answers online -- a student would still need to demonstrate knowledge on a quiz or test, and "stealing" the answers wouldn't really help in the long run. Also, having an answer key lets you check your work as you study. I used Wheelock's Latin in a college course I took and the we were encouraged to use the answer key to check our work.

Any other thoughts or advice about launching such a blog are also welcome!

Thanks in advance!

Note: The book is currently on sale at the Bolchazy-Carducci web site for only $5.00: http://www.bolchazy.com/prod.php?cat=greek&id=5548

[philodendron]

Beatus vir, I, too, would like to find an answer key to An Introduction to Greek by Crosby and Schaeffer as I am attempting to learn Attic Greek on my own. I had one year of classical Greek in college many years ago along with two of Latin so much is review but a key would be of inestimable value to my studies. Please direct me to a source for this material.

[gfross]

I have just started going through Crosby and Schaeffer again in order to review (relearn) classical Greek. It was the textbook I used in a year-long correspondence course that I took in the late '50s, so I am very familiar with it. I have decided to type out the answers to the questions, using the MacIntosh TextEdit program on my MacBook Pro. TextEdit allows me to convert the RTF to almost any other format.

So if either of you is interested, I am very willing to email you my answers to the exercises that I have already done. I don't know if they will be correct or not. It would fun to discuss them, though.

It was about a year ago that you wrote your posts to this thread, so maybe you have already finished the book. If so, then I would be interested in discussing answers.

I have the Dover edition (2009) of the text. By the way, the Bolchazy-Carducci edition now sells for $18.

All the best,

Gordon

[jhalkx]

I am just starting to learn Greek for the first time i have picked up this book because one of my teachers recommended it, i started then realized i have no idea if i'm getting things right. If you could send the answers you have gotten to jhalkx @ yahoo.com you will be a life saver.

[gfross]

Have switched from Crosby and Schaeffer to the books by Rouse as revised by Anne Mahoney: First Greek Course and Rouse's Greek Boy: A Reader. They are far better designed to help students learn to read Greek. A very steep learning curve to start with, however. Some will prefer the gentler, more traditional steps of C and S.

Just letting people know.

[Interaxus]

If anyone's still interested in the original key (actually, Teacher's manual) to Crosby and Schaeffer, it can be downloaded from here:

http://cid-fee40656660aa288.skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?resid=FEE40656660AA288!104

I should point out that it does not include answers to the Greek-to-English exercises. But the rest is there.

Cheers,
Int

[Sinister Petrus]

If anyone's still interested in the original key (actually, Teacher's manual) to Crosby and Schaeffer, it can be downloaded from here:

Use this as opposed to writing to Bolchazy-Carducci. They're nice folks and all, but they do work to protect their copyright. I know. I've been on the request to remove books for download. They can also be a bit slow. I know. I've been on the response end of this.

[ComicSansKitteh]

I know I'm on here a wee bit late, but I was curious to know if your issue was ever resolved. Having worked in the entertainment industry, I know first hand what it's like to have to wait on a response for use of someone's works. It's frustrating and often times useless because many ultimately say no or require an unfathomable fee for usage. I'm not learning Greek, but all about learning materials/periodicals/newspapers from back in the day (hence why I'm here) and I'd like to know the answers. . .simply to see THEIR thought process back then. Have you thought about talking to an IP attorney or entertainment lawyer to see if THEY could get in touch with them? Who knows? You may get lucky and have one of them only charge a small fee. Depends on the person.

Take care. Let me know how it goes!

[Sinister Petrus]

I know I'm on here a wee bit late, but I was curious to know if your issue was ever resolved.

As for any response to the original poster, I have no idea.

But. I would wager good money that Bolchazy-Carducci doesn't have the answer key or teacher's manual to Crosby and Schaeffer, so they won't release it on that reason. I can also tell you that their "publication" of Crosby and Schaeffer is this: a reproduction of an edition in the public domain, a new forweword, an appreciation, some ads in the back and a new cover. Hence the quotes around publication.

I can also let you in on the thought process at B-C (I may say "we" here as I worked there at the time). A few years ago they published a new edition of Bradley's Arnold Latin Composition. The previous edition (1940ish) had an answer key, which we miraculously managed to get a digital copy of. We did not make it available, because 1) the author's intention was for the key to not be readily available (which is nonsense reasoning to self-teachers); 2) we didn't have the man-hours to verify that the existing key fit our edition; and 3) it wasn't public domain yet.

To fix 3, we would have had to find out who held the copyright, which is no simple matter. Matters would be simple if the copyright holder was a company, but I seem to recall it was the author since the book had gone out of print (which, if memory serves, led to a reversion of rights to the author—whether he knew it or not). Again, simple if he had left his IP to one heir or organization, but there may not have been a practical way to find that out either. Likely the rights belonged to all of his surviving heirs, split fractionally among them. (You're correct if you sense I don't like IP very much.)

So, this is effectively a dead issue with the publisher due to lack of possession of either hard copy or IP rights (pick your poison). The original poster should have gotten a response saying as much (as I fielded most of this sort of query while I worked there), but he apparently didn't get or didn't like the response. One is annoying, the other is too bad.