> Can you specify your preferred format of linking and results?
At a minimum, I'd like to take the URL of a page and bookmark it or
send it to a friend. Mostly, I can't do that now. URLs are
session-based and die when I try to use them.
This is a problem the web solved in the mid-to-late 90s. That
libraries haven't solved it is, simply, pathetic.
> G. doesn't want millions of very small documents, and these would
> rank very anyway low because they have no links pointing to them from
> out there.
We've all had this argument before. Honestly, I'm tired of them.
*Google does want them. Their representatives have said so
specifically on the Talis podcast.
*There's no reason Google can't organize the data. They do it for
harder stuff. I want to be able to say "Portland, Maine Twilight" and
get my library. I get pizza places on a map. Why can't I get books?
*Nobody else frets over whether Google "wants" their data. They just
put it on the real web, not on some bullshit mid-90s dark web.
*People don't link to library catalogs because the pages die.
*Libraries themselves have high Google PR. It spreads through a site,
according to link distribution. 99% of LibraryThing pages have no
links to them, except through itself, and we have eight million pages
indexed in Google.
> Besides, G. *has* all of OCLC's data already, and what are they
> doing with them?
Nothing, because only libraries think you succeed in Google by staying
off the web and *asking* Google to create links to you. What a silly
misunderstanding of the web that is!
There are two reasons for this:
1. Vendors don't make linkable systems, mostly because libraries don't
force them to.
2. OCLC maintains that libraries should stay off the web, and rely on
WorldCat to serve as their front-end to the world.
The result:
1. Libraries are almost NEVER in search results.
2. WorldCat is seldom visited. For example, WorldCat has HALF the
traffic of LibraryThing. It even has less traffic than Dogster.com,
the social network for people who REALLY love their dogs.
Libraries are a cornerstone of world civilization, and a critical
piece of the information world. They deserve better than Dogster.
Tim
--
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding
Received on Fri Oct 23 2009 - 10:21:02 EDT