On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 17:57, Bernhard Eversberg <ev_at_biblio.tu-bs.de> wrote:
> Yes, the market. But there's the rub: Libraries have always been about
> providing free and liberal and uncensored access to information for
> everybody.
No, that's not the rub, not in this new brave world. In the past the
rub was that information and access was *hard*. With the digital
realm, access and information is *easy*. The hard part is making sense
of the sheer amount of stuff, how to gleam gold from all that silt,
but this last part isn't something the library world has worked hard
at (for, mostly, historical reasons, of course).
> Those books the google deal will make available will not be free,
> access will not be liberal, and whether or not there might be
> censorship (blocking of access, removal of files) will be difficult to
> find out.
Well, I suspect the access point of all of this is what we already see
in electronic resources; libraries buy the access *for* the patrons.
But you don't need much of a catalog or procurement process to do
that. Also, the price of information goes down as the amount goes up.
It's the long tail, if you like, of information access.
> In a market economy, access to information can of course not be
> completely free - someone's got to pay even for the books libraries
> put on their shelves and the licenses they obtain from producers.
> So it ultimately depends on taxpayers if they want the market to
> manage *all* access to information, for everybody. If eventually it
> turns out the market can do a better job to everybody's satisfaction,
> then of course there's no longer a point in having libraries. Right now,
> it is an open question if and when that will come about. If it does,
> the library mission will be put to rest.
No disagreement there. I'm, however, skeptical of how the library
world itself are dealing with this open question.
> Paper isn't perfect, we all know it. Books are a nightmare to deal with
> when you have millions. Libraries/ians are doomed if they cling to
> books. They aren't doing that, though, they are integrating their
> collections into the digital world already, and a huge part of
> those collections is currently not digitized anywhere and of course they
> have nowhere near the resources to do it. "Liberate the bound volumes!"
> was a slogan in the 90s, but that's only a first step. What needs to be
> done is liberating their content from its confines, in a much bigger way
> than has been possible with catalog records, FRBRed or not.
I feel it's deeper than that. Think of how many generations removed
from when all academic information, apart from historical reference,
are integrated into a network, think of the value the library has in
such an environment. I'd say ; zero. And if you lose the academic
angle, you'll lose something the library world has held dear for a
very long time, that academic connection, the pride of organizing the
worlds knowledge. I personally think this is disastrous, both for the
real and the library world.
> Readers do not dream of better catalogs
Readers don't give a monkey's rectum about what a catalog is. If you
promote it as a fantastic way to list all of the available content to
them is easy ways, then yes, they'll care. But, um, you're not exactly
there yet.
> For the time being, it may still be less than bad to do some good
> cataloging.
Well, enjoy it while it lasts. :)
Regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Tue Mar 30 2010 - 03:53:50 EDT