As for selling v. free -- librarians want something that will be there
for the foreseeable future -- they don't want their system breaking
randomly because someone decided to close a site and go meditate on a
mountain. Unfortunately, many 'free' services tend to be ephemeral. With
$$, you sign a contract, and that contract has penalties for
non-performance, so the company is pretty much constrained to keep
going. Not that companies have never failed libraries, but they have
almost certainly done so less than 'free' services.
Eventually, we'll have free services that have enough of a track record
to be trusted, but as we know, libraries work on a long time frame --
not years, but at least decades.
kc
Tim Spalding wrote:
> My big hope is for the OpenLibrary project, but, while I don't follow
> Open Library as closely as I was once, I get the feeling that it's not
> winning—it's not succeeding in breaking the library data out, getting
> enough non-library or user data to mount a challenge that way, or
> involving enough people in the library community. I'm doing a lot of
> publishing talks now, and I haven't met anyone who's even heard of it.
> Open sourcing book data seems like a complete no-brainer, and yet...
>
> Similarly, although LibraryThing has basically let go of a million
> covers and series data as good as anyone else's, and it's going
> nowhere. What works for us—and it's working like hell—are the things
> we sell as ready-made services (tags, recommendations, soon reviews).
> I would bet you anything that, if we had *sold* the covers, they'd be
> used more. Seriously. Maybe we could sell them and then—psych—not send
> a bill.
>
> I think these are complexly layered problems—technology, culture,
> habit, markets. In all these respects, libraries are dissimilar from
> tech companies. It's not merely that librarians don't have the tech
> skills we might want. Even if they had them, the whole culture is
> geared toward dealing with known evils, not risky goods.
>
> I also wonder about the idea that librarians need to do more of the
> library IT work. Is this how other industries work? Does the banking
> industry leverage technology successfully because there is a class of
> banker-coders? No, whether they do it in-house or out, they basically
> outsource the task to people who aren't in their industry. This is
> harder for libraries because library technology—standards, apps—are so
> (over) specific to the library field. It forces libraries to
> concentrate more and more on something that is not, in the end, their
> core strength.
>
> $.02
>
> Tim
>
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Jesse Ephraim
> <JEphraim_at_ci.southlake.tx.us> wrote:
>
>>> I personally believe that opening up our data
>>> would be the beginning of a solution to multitudes
>>> of problems.
>>>
>> I agree. That is one of the major things that holds libraries back.
>>
>>
>>> This is the key point: if librarians don't try to solve these issues,
>>>
>> somebody else will.
>>
>> Exactly. LibraryThing has achieved more in the past two years than the
>> majority of libraries out there.
>>
>> Jesse Ephraim
>>
>> Youth Services Librarian
>> Southlake Public Library
>> 1400 Main St., Ste. 130
>> Southlake, TX 76092
>>
>> Email: jephraim_at_ci.southlake.tx.us
>> Phone: (817) 748-8248
>> FAX: (817) 748-8250
>> www.southlakelibrary.org
>> uncommonly friendly service
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
Received on Wed Oct 01 2008 - 00:46:57 EDT