Building Earth's Largest Library

[Sloan, Bernie]

Forwarded from another list with Steve Coffman's permission.....

Steve Coffman got a lot of reaction to his article in the March issue
of Searcher Magazine, but he says he has "not heard from many 
people directly involved with the library automation 'community'."
He's going to do a follow-up for the July/August issue, and is looking
for reactions to the March article. See following note...

Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
University of Illinois Office for Planning & Budgeting
338 Henry Administration Building
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL  61801
Phone: (217) 333-4895  
Fax: (217) 333-6355
Email: bernies at uillinois.edu

> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Howdy folks.
> 
> In the March issue of Searcher Magazine I wrote an article called Building
> Earth's Largest Library where I tried to apply the Amazon.com business
> model
> to the library world.  The piece has generated so much reaction (over 150
> letters to the editor and email postings so far) that the editor has asked
> me to do a follow-up piece for the July / August issue to address the
> various issues that have been raised.
> 
> My problem is that while I have a lot of comments and many of them are
> quite
> positive (like "when do we start?")....so far I have not heard from many
> people directly involved with the library automation "community"  ...and
> I'm
> afraid I've said some rather uncomplimentary things about the state of our
> current systems ....especially as compared with what people like Amazon
> have
> developed.  So I would be much obliged if those of you who are interested
> would have a look at the piece which is available full-text on the Web at
> http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/mar/searcher.htm   ...and then let me
> know
> what you think.  I will summarize all responses in the July / August issue
> of Searcher and that article will also be available full-text on the Web
> ...I'll send the address when it comes out.  And if you are really
> interested in the idea, you should know that the Internet Librarian
> Conference is planning a whole track on the concept at their meeting in
> San
> Diego this November.   I look forward to hearing from all of you ...and
> don't pull any punches, OK.
> 
> 
> Yours,
> 
> 
> SC
> 
> Steve Coffman
> Director, FYI
> County of Los Angeles Public Library
> 1-800-582-1093
> 562-868-4065 fax
> coffman at cerf.net
> http://colapublib.org/fyi/city