On Dec 18, 2007, at 4:54 AM, Stephens, Owen wrote:
>> It's difficult to imagine this working with the Universal
>> Library. That resource has such primitive searching
>> capabilities...almost as if building the collection was top
>> priority, without much thought given to how to access what's
>> in the collection.
>
> Ummm... not wanting to be overly picky here - but surely building the
> collection has to take priority over access?
At the risk of pulling things too much out of context, I disagree; I
do not think collections take priority over access. More
specifically, I think neither collections nor access takes precedence
over the other. Collections without services (such as access) are
useless; services without collections are empty.
Collections and services in a library are a Yin and Yang sort of
thing. Together they make a library. Separate they equal less than
the sum of their parts. You can't have one and not the other and call
the result a library.
Collections without services are useless. Who cares if a library owns
a pile of stuff if you can't do things with the stuff. Search.
Browse. Borrow. Renew. Evaluate. Share. Annotate. Print. Compare &
contrast. Extract all images from. Extract all citations from. Cite.
Buy. Sell. Etc. Without some levels of service against collection,
your "library" is not a library. It is embryonic and a proto-library.
Libraries are to be used and without services against them they can
not be used.
Services without collections are empty. It is not all about services
because without collections it is not possible to preserve
collections for future use. Without collections it is not possible to
provide services against them. Without collections your library is
literally empty -- a broker to content. Google provides bunches o'
services against content. It provides access to content, but I don't
think very many people would call it a library.
Again, the point I'm trying to make is that collections over services
or the other way around is a fruitless discussion. Neither is more
important. You need both to call your thing a library.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
Received on Tue Dec 18 2007 - 09:44:11 EST