[WEB4LIB] Re: FW: Important Article -II

[David Merchant]

>PRINCIPLE is the same.  Is a thousand dollar journal that is used only ten 
>times a year a better or worse expenditure, and why, than ten hundred 
>dollar books used once a year each?  (Note that that is intended as a 
>rhetorical questions, not the start of a new discussion)  Consider that an 
>essay question on the final of a class in collection development.

Or a good Masters Exam question...!

>>OK, my fault, I should've said "book Y would not be very popular, so lets
>>not buy it" and if every library thought that, it would never be bought,
>>etc.  How would the cooperative collection development  handle that?
>That is just another aspect of cooperative collection development.  If 
>library X and library Y are both interested in the history of the Balkans, 

That answers the question of how cooperative collection development would
handle buying of books that is _wanted_ by all libraries involved, but not
of "who buys the books that no library wants to buy? " Maybe I'm not posing
the question right (it's been a very very bad monday...) so I probably
should stop trying :-/.

>>Library A must buy a book they'd rather not buy so that the other libraries
>>won't have to and thus have at least one copy for ILL, then Library B must
>>buy the next book, which they'd rather not buy either, so that other
>>libraries won't have to but it'll be available by ILL.
>
>Yup, that's about it, though you placed it in negative terms rather than 
>positive.

Sorry, it's been one of those days (car didn't start, wife out of town at a
conference, I find out an acquaintance killed herself, plus the normal
problems greeting a systems person on a Monday morning...) and so I'm a bit
negative and probably shouldn't be trying to discuss or debate anything
right now.

>Well, I'm old an cynical enough to think that NOTHING will ever work 
>"globally" for all libraries, all peoples, etc.  But that doesn't mean we 

Otay, that didn't come across at first.  Thought you were thinking that it
would work just fine!

>shouldn't work in those directions.  What is it that the bumper stickers 
>say: "Think globally, act locally"?  You can define local and global to 
>suit your needs, of course.

Exactly what I think we should work toward.  Again, the article was more on
the "Think globally, act globally" to me (maybe a misread on my part, bu it
sure seemed to say "abandon local catalogs").

>No argument.  Panaceas don't exist, and are unlikely to, at least in this 
>world.  But again, we can work on improving cooperation and coordination, 

Can't argue against that.

Anywho, thanks for some good brain food,

TTFN,
David
Systems Librarian, Louisiana Tech University  <www.latech.edu/tech/library/>
javascript list administrator  <www.mountaindragon.com/javascript>
HTML Examples webmaster <www.mountaindragon.com/html/>
Personal Page <www.mountaindragon.com/merchant/>