[WEB4LIB] linking to commercial book vendor sites?

[George Porter]

We thrashed through this issue some time ago, probably not for the last
time.  Since (web) time immemorial (late 1996?) we had offered a link to
Amazon.com.  When it was suggested that we add a link to Barnes & Noble's
e-commerce site, many philosophical, moral, and ethical issues arose.

As near as it could be established, the original link was a recognition of
the unique utility offered by Amazon.  Whether that utility derived from
being a free substitute for Books in Print, the ease of ordering books, or
the potential discounts, is more difficult to determine, years after the
fact and several personnel changes later.  Side-stepping the potential
philosophical quagmire of joining the affiliate's program, we decided to go
with a handful of links
<http://library.caltech.edu/reference/default.htm#publish> to online book
vendor multisearch services and out-of-print book dealers.  The campus
community appears to be well served by the choices we've made and we haven't
gotten any negative user feedback about the presence or absence of any
particular vendor.

Books are a much easier choice for a library to support than the many
auction websites.  Same mountain, different face of the proverbial slippery
slope.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
California Institute of Technology
Mail Code 1-43, Pasadena, CA  91125
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681