On Jul 29, 2008, at 11:57 AM, Tim Spalding wrote:
> So, instead of linking to American Memory, mirror it locally?
Yes, quite possibly, if your collection policy warrants that direction.
As one who is not a collection developer/bibliographer but only plays
one on mailing lists, a collection policy should/ought to touch on a
number of things, such as but not limited to:
* how many resources do you have (time,
money, space, hardware & software, people,
etc.)
* who is your audience (students, faculty,
people who are alive yet)
* what formats of content to collect (books,
journals, images, movies, manuscripts, etc.)
* what subjects of stuff to collect (forestry,
medicine, physics & astronomy, etc.)
* what roles does your library play in
regards to broader librarianship issues
(collection, reference, preservation of
the historical cord, intellectual freedom,
etc.)
* what services do you want to provide
against your content (lend, annotate, enhance,
compare & contrast, analyze, etc.)
Depending on how a library approaches the answers to these sorts of
issues, it might be entirely feasible to mirror American Memory, but
in most library's policies the lack of resources will be the limiting
factor.
P.S. Sooner or later, it is entirely possible we will be carrying
around the whole of American Memory on our iPods in our pockets.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
Received on Tue Jul 29 2008 - 11:39:10 EDT