On Fri, 10 Jul 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
I think things like HealthLibrarian, Mednar, the previous work done by Index
Data with open content, the cooperative alluded to by OCLC and Ebsco, and
Serials Solutions Summon all represent a trend and/or opportunity for folks
like ourselves. Identify (open access) content, harvest it, index it, and
provide access to the index. If we were smart and cooperative, then we would
create these indexes in some sort of sharable format (like a specifically
structured Lucene index) allowing libraries to mix & match indexes to meet
local needs. I will collect and index philosophy and theology materials. MIT
will index computer science and mathematics. NCSU will collect engineering
and agriculture. Etc. Once we get this process under our belts we could then
go after the "closed" access content. By going through such a process we will
educate ourselves, improve our skills, become more self-reliant, and save
buckets of money in the long run. Not to mention provide value-added access
to the materials needed by our patrons.
At the same time, I also understand many of us would rather pay for the
convenience of having this index packaged for us. If not, then there never
would have been a market of Poole's original periodical index.
Didn't someone suggest a while back that if every major research library
were to chip in a fraction of an FTE, we could then pool resources and
dedicate a couple of people to make stuff (I believe it might've been
mentioned in the context of open source software) for the library
community?
-Joe
