[WEB4LIB] FW: Important Article

[David Merchant]

After wading through what seemed like a long commercial for Amazon.com
(which I do use, and do like, but pah-leez the article could've been a
little less "promo for Amazon"), I came across this statement:

>The solution is the same one that Bezos came up with for Amazon: 1) Do away 
>with the local catalog; 2) Build a global catalog
>that allows patrons to search all the material in the local collection PLUS 
>the 40+ million items available through ILL in the OCLC
>Worldcat database, and, because the OCLC database doesn’t pick up everything 
>in print, toss in the 3 million items from the
>Amazon database for good measure. (We’ll talk about how you might deliver 
>those non-OCLC titles in a bit). Like Amazon, such a
>catalog would not distinguish between local holdings and those that might 
>come in from elsewhere. The patron would see a single
>catalog, the difference between the items displayed in predictions of the 
>amount of time it would take to get them. Some items
>would carry the “available immediately” mark if they happened to sit on the 
>shelf in the local collection; others might carry a 24-48
>hours mark, or 3-4 days, or 2-6 weeks, depending on the arrangements worked 
>out with supplying libraries. 

I believe I'm going to have to disagree.  While on the surface, this looks
great, there are a couple of issues not addressed:

1. the 'Net has connectivity problems.  Where would this "one catalog" sit?
 If the connection to the 'Net is down, there is no access.  A local
database will more likely be accessible than a distant one.  And that
distant one can get bogged down with heavy hits, making a local user who
wants to find out if there is a certain book on the local shelf will have
to wait a long time to find that info out, and may find shelf browsing faster.

Which leads me to #2.

2. Local collection.  Sometimes I want to find which books on topic X _my_
library has.  I don't care what others may or may not have, I want to find
what my library has.  For example, on HTML 4 books: there are many titles
on the subject, and I may not care which exact one I check out, any one
would probably do, or one of several narrowed down titles would do, and now
I'm searching to see what the local library has.  I  will be happy for any
one off my list.  I don't want to have to search some huge database and get
back lots and lots of hits, most of which are useless to me because they
are held by other libraries, and thus have to wade through them all to find
the few my library has on the self right now.  I pick a couple of titles
and then go and see which one isn't checked out yet.  If the library is
out, yes, I might be interested in ILL at that point.  But only at that point.

Ah, but maybe the Global Catalogue could have an option to only search your
library's holdings.  But then that negates the 

>The solution is the same one that Bezos came up with for Amazon: 1) Do away 
>with the local catalog; 

and

>those non-OCLC titles in a bit). Like Amazon, such a
>catalog would not distinguish between local holdings and those that might 

The local catalog is still there, with the option I mention.

3.  Up-to-dateness/configuration.  Can the local library update the global
catalog?  Can the local library configure an interface to the global
catalog to reflect the uniqueness of their client base?   Different
cultures access the same database differently.  And some countries/nations
will not allow certain items to be available to their people, they won't
even want it to show up in the return hits of a search.  They won't sign
up.  Thus, not a Global Catalog.  In fact, the whole article ranks of
North-American-centric thinking.

TTFN,
David










Systems Librarian, Louisiana Tech University 
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