On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 21:19, Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> As in my message to Tim, librarians go into some pains to show
> that the results from a Google search are not reliable enough for
> genuine research.
To put it a bit cheeky, most of them would say Google can't do fielded
searching, which is true, but you can simulate it, and what's more, in
order for fielded searching to work the contents of those fields must
be accurate and effective. And, well, MARC meta data has a few global
mailing-lists dedicated to fixing errors, explain peculiarities and
work with it. Most librarians show examples of stuff they already
know, stuff that wouldn't fail in a kind of straw-man way.
Put differently, if you let Google have 100% access to everything in
your catalog, which would be better for research?
>> > But the point is that no
>> > library is interested in collecting free e-books.
>>
>> Why not?
>
> First reason for not collecting them (at least I believe), free e-books can disappear tomorrow
Isn't the point of collecting them so that if they disappear in one
spot you still got a copy?
> If you buy access to ebooks (which in effect, is often renting them since in some plans
> you pay a yearly charge for them), if you buy say, 50,000 volumes and next year you
> can't afford it, all that work at cataloging is gone.
Um, if you *buy* access, then they're not free, are they? The argument
here was about free e-books.
> But I think the main reason is that it bypasses normal library workflows.
And with that I think the word "Exactly!" shall close my emailing for
the day. If it isn't clear enough, I think this is the worst possible
reason ever! Exactly! :)
Kind regards,
Alex
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Received on Mon Mar 02 2009 - 05:59:42 EST