Erin S. Stalberg wrote:
>
> There are a few assumptions built into your logic here that, in my
> opinion, need light. There was a bit of discussion at the FoBC the
> other day about these discussions not being about "reducing" costs, but
> rather about "shifting" costs. Get the publishers more involved at the
> beginning of the supply chain (shift cost to the publishers), get OCLC
> to pick up more slack, get authors (photographers, in the National
> Geographic Society example) to submit metadata, etc.
>
Another interesting statement at the meeting (I think it was Rick Lugg)
was that we have an odd way of thinking about "costs" -- we only see the
cost of cataloging, but we don't see the cost of having books
unavailable to our users because we have a cataloging backlog. In other
words, we only see our own costs, not the total costs to the community.
So in a sense we have already shifted some costs to the users, albeit
unconsciously.
kc
--
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Thu Jul 12 2007 - 08:43:14 EDT