Building Earth's Largest Library
Stephen Coffman
Howdy folks.
In the March issue of Searcher Magazine I wrote an article called Building
Earth's Largest Library where I tried to apply the Amazon.com business model
to the library world. The piece has generated so much reaction (over 150
letters to the editor and email postings so far) that the editor has asked
me to do a follow-up piece for the July / August issue to address the
various issues that have been raised.
My problem is that while I have a lot of comments and many of them are quite
positive (like "when do we start?")....so far I have not heard from many
people directly involved with the library automation "community" ...and I'm
afraid I've said some rather uncomplimentary things about the state of our
current systems ....especially as compared with what people like Amazon have
developed. So I would be much obliged if those of you who are interested
would have a look at the piece which is available full-text on the Web at
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/mar/searcher.htm ...and then let me know
what you think. I will summarize all responses in the July / August issue
of Searcher and that article will also be available full-text on the Web
...I'll send the address when it comes out. And if you are really
interested in the idea, you should know that the Internet Librarian
Conference is planning a whole track on the concept at their meeting in San
Diego this November. I look forward to hearing from all of you ...and
don't pull any punches, OK.
Yours,
SC
Steve Coffman
Director, FYI
County of Los Angeles Public Library
1-800-582-1093
562-868-4065 fax
cof...@cerf.net
http://colapublib.org/fyi/city