>Indeed; as long as we try to compete with the big guys, we will
>*always* be playing catchup; there is no way ever we will have the
resources, smarts and money to do what they're doing. >This is why we
need to focus on all of those things in our portfolio which we can
assume they're not interested in >spending efforts on, things they can't
capitalise on.
Or do we forget trying to compete, and jump on board? I've just been
told by senior management that Google offers our users much more
functionality that our library catalogue, so we need to offer our
"stuff" via Google - not true, but obviously a serious statement about
our OPAC.
>From my own position, I have regular arguments with traditional
librarians who still claim that we must have everything in our catalogue
that might be of value to our students and faculty, because if it is in
our catalogue they know it will be "worthy". My argument is that they
are beginning their searching on Google, so we shouldn't waste our
scarce resources duplicating web resources in the catalogue, as they
will find them anyway. And if they need us to tell them if they are
"worthy" or not, we have failed in our job.
Carolyn
Received on Thu Jun 29 2006 - 06:15:05 EDT