Dan Greenstein has for a long time believed that the future of libraries will involve streamlining existing services and eliminating duplicative activity in order to fund new and innovative services. For the most part, the duplicative services he's identified are in technical services, particularly cataloging, which has also been frequently discussed on this list, but he's also discussed acquisitions, licensing of electronic resources, shared high-density storage of underused items, etc.
I have a hard time believing that he actually recommended outsourcing the cataloging function of libraries to Google, but he has been an advocate for participation in the Google book project and other non-traditional partnerships. I'd believe that he said that full-text search is the way of the future, though, and that cataloging may not be needed given what Google and others can provide.
Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator
Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax)
dplumer_at_tsl.state.tx.us
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU]On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:59 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Y'all will love this
Just wanted to thank Thomas Krichel for mentioning this.
Daniel Greenstein is a former director of the California Digital Library, and a former director of the Digital Library Federation. He's not some clueless administrator who wandered in off the streets to share his thoughts on the future of academic libraries.
Which, I suppose, makes his vision of the future of academic libraries a little bit scarier...he has a library background.
Bernie Sloan
--- On Thu, 9/24/09, Thomas Krichel <krichel_at_OPENLIB.ORG> wrote:
From: Thomas Krichel <krichel_at_OPENLIB.ORG>
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Y'all will love this
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009, 12:33 PM
Voros, David writes
> Well lets look at the source He's an admin from a very distressed California
> system of higher ed. I am afraid he would not fit into the academic world on
> our side of the country.
Have you checked out his CV? I met him when he was involved with
the JISC in its eLib program in the 90s. His digital library
experienc probably trumps the one most of the members of this
list. He must be taken serious.
Cheers,
Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel
RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
skype: thomaskrichel
Received on Thu Sep 24 2009 - 13:31:04 EDT