I agree with the fact that it is futile to try to beat these companies at their own game. That will never happen by a single library. They have more data and they have something that might be better than all the other kinds: intentional data. They can build their interfaces based on how people vote with their wallets through purchasing data from Amazon or library holdings data at OCLC. They can follow the money and we cannot.

However, this is not to say that libraries, and academic libraries in particular, do not have a niche in the information market. It is crucial for library systems developers to understand that libraries build collections. We make deliberate, careful and researched choices about what goes into the collection. We don’t have all the data at our disposal precisely because we don’t have unlimited budgets, so if we are doing our jobs well, we are only selecting the good materials for our collections.

Libraries can build a research map with a next generation library catalog. A good collection is defined not simply by the fact that it contains multiple items, but because their is some cohesion among the items collected. One thing that I cannot understand is why people cannot look past the physical containers of information objects. For an information collection, the cohesion which makes it worthy of the effort needed to build and sustain it is not based on the fact that they are all physically available items at the researcher’s disposal. That would simply make it a collection. What makes the collection good is the fact that it represents both a breadth and depth of knowledge required to conduct research. Or simply put, it contains good information.

I imagine a research process that is more like a partnership of the big research tools (Amazon, Google, OCLC) with the local library’s online research tools. In his discussion of the way that Wikipedia functions as a probability-based system Chris Anderson wrote in The Long Tail, “Wikipedia should be the first source of information, not the last. It should be a site for information exploration, not the definitive source of the facts.”

My take on the current state of research is similar. In the beginning of the research process it is advantageous as Nate said to go to a source that is not limited by physical geography. However, I think there are efficiencies that can be gained if libraries can get involved in the later stages of the research process.

After finding one good item at Amazon, you are offered “more like this” because someone wants to make a buck by selling you two books rather than one. At a library, where the collection has presumably been carefully selected, if you find the one good book you have a greater chance that the “more like this” offerings will also be more good information.

If Amazon wants to make another buck, what is our motivation? In the university environment in particular, we participate in the original reputation economy. A university employee inherits status from the status of the university. The university’s reputation is based on the quality of the research and scholarship it produces. Thus if I want to improve my reputation as a librarian, I have every incentive to make sure my researchers are finding quality information that makes their academic work as sound as possible.

In essence, I want to select and then make available a great collection. While libraries have been doing a great job building the collection, we are only now beginning to see how much work still needs to be done building systems that showcase those collections.

The first few hundred titles in the OCLC list are mainly titles we might associate with classic canonical literature, with some classic children’s lit thrown into the mix.  These would be books held widely in both public and academic libraries, I suppose.  Is there anything on this list that does surprise you?  Did you expect popular culture items to rank higher on the list?  And why did Garfield catapult to the top?  Weirdness.

Yesterday the EFF released a don’t buy list of CDs that I think libraries would do well to avoid. I would never want to be responsible for installing this software on a patron’s computer.

Pursuant to the past discussion about the eradication of “new books” shelves in libraries in favor of online lists, this came in an email from my library’s access services head:

“After complaints from readers and a conversation with the Chair of the Library Board, we have put in place a consolidated Selected New Acquisitions display in the Current Periodicals Reading Room. This physical display of selected new books is meant to complement the New Acquisitions web page.”

And so: new books, regardless of subject, are now displayed in a single location, whereas they used to be displayed on the relevant floors of the library. Meaning, they’re still essentially invisible. The books remain there for one calendar week.

This is food for thought when it comes to assumptions about how our patron-base – and our boards – will respond to certain initiatives. Even if we can’t survey the patrons about every issue, and even if we can’t run every decision past our board members, I think this is an interesting example of those two powerful groups speaking up for something important to them and making us accountable.

Thoughts?

This came in an email from OCLC:

“OCLC has begun a pilot within the Open WorldCat program to facilitate the online purchase of books identified through Open WorldCat. Web searchers in the United States that reach Open WorldCat from popular search engines or other Web resources may use a book buying link to purchase books through Baker & Taylor, a leading provider of books, videos, music and other services to libraries, retailers and other resellers.

“This new component of the Open WorldCat program not only connects Web searchers with the materials they need; it also delivers a financial benefit to libraries that participate in the program. Each time a Web searcher purchases a book through Open WorldCat, a portion of the proceeds will be shared with Open WorldCat libraries in one of two ways. The purchaser decides online whether to apply a credit directly to the account of a selected Open WorldCat participant library or to redirect the credit to support the ongoing development of Open WorldCat for the benefit of all participating libraries.

“In the introductory phase of book purchasing through Open WorldCat, Baker & Taylor is the single supplier of books….”

This strikes me as singularly against the grain of what the OCLC database should be for. There seems to be a problem with the fact that OCLC is not a government project – not a Library of Congress system – and that problem allows the private company to act as a gateway for book sellers.

Baker & Taylor’s sales will, no doubt, go up from this. This is another instance of a selector’s choice being quietly taken away; won’t library administrations support using this purchase option in order to avoid the staff time needed to search for, and purchase, the item elsewhere?

Libraries are becoming entangled in corporations to the degree that we can barely differentiate between functions.