Thanks, John, This news should make us think about the role of OL. To put it in context, most people making investments in software and services do expect (and need) to get a return. That return usually comes, these days, in the form of a buy-out. Goodreads obviously has value to Amazon because of its user base (clearly a high number of book buyers).
OL has not positioned itself in a way that would make it a likely target for a buy-out offer. It hasn't had nearly the degree of investment that something like GoodReads has had, and it has avoided becoming the kind of social network that could be exploited for marketing. In this sense, OL is acting like a "real" library, providing a service while protecting the privacy of its users -- except that it doesn't have the institutional or governmental funding source that a library would normally have. To my mind, the $64,000 question here (and these days we should add a few more zeroes to that old saw) is: how can OL be sustained? There is definitely work that needs to be done to OL, but without a clear long-range vision and confidence in its future, it is difficult to justify significant investment. I am aware of particular needs in the library arena, but part of my reason for want the /community/ pages was so that we could gather more information about how people use or would like to use OL, with an eye to getting a better picture of what role it could play. kc On 3/31/13 9:10 AM, John Rigdon wrote: > Amazon has announced acquisition of Goodreads. > > What are the implications of this for Open Library - specifically the huge > library of book reviews and the user community (16 million) around > Goodreads and 23 million reviews. > > Is there a strategy to attract a significant number of these people to > participate in OL in addition to or instead of Goodreads? > > I know when I have asked specific reviewers for permission to quote their > review the most common response is that they do not want to have their > reviews sponsoring a commercial enterprise - specifically my site of Civil > War books for sale. > > On the other hand, I think the submission of a review of a book cover to > OL specifically means that anyone can use it in any way they want. > > John Rigdon > www.researchonline.net > > _______________________________________________ > Ol-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to > [email protected] > -- Karen Coyle [email protected] http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet _______________________________________________ Ol-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
