[WEB4LIB] linking to commercial book vendor sites?

[Eric Hellman]

If you're worried about endorsing one book vendor over another, you 
no longer have that excuse not to link (on a book-by-book basis) to 
book resources on the web. Last week we turned on the second version 
of LinkBaton, (http://my.linkbaton.com/) complete with new, easier 
end-user interface.

If you're just talking about putting a general link to Amazon on your 
library site, I'd advise taking a patron-centric approach to the 
question. Would your patrons find the link helpful? You can do 
experiments instead of relying on guesswork. Instead of a direct 
link, use a link to a redirect page on your site, then look at your 
logs and count how often the link is followed. If the link is 
followed less than 1% of the times it's seen, then it's not really 
useful to your patrons.

It is appropriate to lament the fact that potentially useful sites 
like the Library of Congress use session tracking and are thus 
impossible to link to, other than in a general link.

Eric



At 10:23 AM -0700 4/25/00, Laura Hudson wrote:
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>A question has come up at my institution regarding the 
>appropriateness of linking to book vendor sites such as amazon.com. 
>In searching the Web4Lib archives, I see much discussion surrounding 
>the question of becoming an -affiliate- of a book vendor and 
>receiving money in return, but not of simply selecting a commerce 
>site for linking from a library Website.
>
>Part of me feels that this is indeed significantly different from 
>simply selecting sites which contain advertising (such as 
>brittanica.com) or from selecting and paying for commercial 
>databases, and is perhaps inappropriate for a public institution, 
>but I'm having a difficult time articulating exactly why.  Another 
>part of me feels that amazon.com and other such sites are a great 
>repository of information, above and beyond their primary purpose 
>(commerce), and that linking to them is a service to our patrons.
>
>So, who out there links to book vendors, who out there doesn't, and 
>why or why not?  I'd be glad to gather this information and post the 
>results if you'd reply to me privately.
>
>Much thanks,
>
>Laura Hudson
>Electronic Systems and Services Librarian
>San Diego State University
>lhudson at mail.sdsu.edu
>619-594-3521

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
http://www.openly.com/           21st Century Information Infrastructure
LinkBaton: Your Shortcuts to Information  http://linkbaton.com/