[WEB4LIB] RE: Amazon.com Added Value Features and Functionalities

[Professional Resources]

I Have been receiving your mail along with numerous irrelevant ones without my authorization. 
Should it be an error, you are invited to clear the problem at your side or at your provider's by removing my address from your list, otherwise I would be compelled to daily flood your box with 1500 silly messages from our 245 different addresses throughout the world until you stop flooding ours.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: George Porter 
  To: Multiple recipients of list 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 11:51 PM
  Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Amazon.com Added Value Features and Functionalities


  I won't take issue with all of Gerry McKeirnan's points, but I have found
  the privacy issues surrounding the purchasing circles concept on Amazon
  troubling.  To advocate having an OPAC divulge:

  "... a 'patrons who borrowed this book also borrowed  ....' feature"

  is absolutely a bad idea.  Not only do we not tell others what an individual
  currently have in use, but we certainly don't offer a papertrail of their
  borrowing habits.

  At a smaller school, like Caltech, the circulation numbers for specialized
  titles would be the key to determining the reading habits of individual
  faculty.  This would be a serious privacy issue on campus, if the results
  were viewable from elsewhere, it would be an even larger issue.

  Thanks, but no thanks,

  George S. Porter
  Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
  California Institute of Technology
  Mail Code 1-43, Pasadena, CA  91125
  Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681

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