The cost of Web site selection

[Paul Neff]

On Saturday, June 28, Steve Benson wrote:

>[...selection] is directed toward getting the best resources available
>with the finite budget you have to work with.  As such you don't reject
>something except in the context of spending your funds on something better.
>And, once you have the Internet you have it all.  I costs you no more to
>limit access to 10 bookmarked sites than it does to have unfettered access.

I thought Steve's post quite good, but I don't agree with this last sentence
above.  Contrary to the economics of book selection, the costs of defining
patron access to Internet resources in any way may vary widely but nearly
always occur.  Filters cost time and money to implement and maintain, as do
bookmark files and catalog records, given the staff time involved in
maintaining them.  Even "open" patron access to the Internet will incur
costs in downtime and reinstallation of software, particularly if the public
workstation desktops/file systems aren't secured.  If we're going to debate
filtering as selection and selection as the allocation of finite resources,
we ought to acknowledge the real costs of Internet resource selection,
particularly as related to staff time/workload and cost-of-ownership issues.
Having said that, I'll freely admit that I have no idea as yet what these
are for my own library  :-)  but I'd like to hear from any library system
administrators, etc. who have tried to determine what these costs might be.
I will assert, however, that having been involved with Web site
selection/deselection on several levels in my short life, I believe such
costs to be a) real and b) more complex than has previously implied in this
thread.

  Paul Neff
  _______________________________________________________________
  Technology Services Manager, Arlington Heights Memorial Library
  847/506-2652 :: 500 N. Dunton Ave., Arlington Hts IL 60004-5910
  pneff at nslsilus.org   ::   Not an official communication of AHML