On 11 April 2011 10:49, Charles Matthews <[email protected]> wrote:
> And there is no particular reason why paid staff couldn't be a viable > route to a competitor. But that sounds like the annual budget. And I > suppose the assumption is that doing content in English is enough. You'd > have to sell a lot of advertising and/or subscriptions. There probably > is a niche, at least, for a general encyclopedia that libraries would > willingly pay for, written professionally. Would that worry us? You assume libraries have any money whatsoever. I have anecdotal comments by someone from 2005 on http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/277688.html - "Libraries are glorified combination of internet cafes, OAP reading rooms, care-in-the-community day centres and a half-way-house between Blockbuster and CashConverter in terms of CD and DVD rental. In 10 years they'll look like Starbucks (probably due to being owned by them), or be shut - the lot of them. My basis for this opinion - my mother is Reference Librarian for Lancashire (and has been for about 10 years now), and if she had the funding for a Britannica in every branch she'd spend the money on replacing several hundred other books per branch instead." That is, it would have to be quite a remarkable encyclopedia indeed to actually spend money on. I can't imagine library funding has actually gotten better since 2005 - there's Vodafone's tax break to pay for, after all. - d. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
