[WEB4LIB] Re: Northern Light To Stop Free Publicly Available Search Service

[Tara Calishain]

At 04:28 PM 1/9/2002, Richard Wiggins wrote:
> > Why should there be.  A business might have a "going out of business
> > sale", but since NL doesn't have anything to sell, that seems kind of
> > pointless.
>
> > Well, when you're getting it free, are you a customer?
>
>Yes, we most certainly are customers.  It was a banner ad supported 
>service, and/or a "free" service offered as a tease to get people to buy 
>from the Special Collection.  Maybe they didn't make much money on the 
>free service, but a service marketed to people with no charge to end users 
>is still a service.
>
>I really can't believe you accept that it is just fine for NL to offer 
>this service for years, advertise it, talk about it at library 
>conferences, tout it in press releases, and then shut it down with no 
>notice on the most obvious place to warn users: the portal itself.

Richard, just out of curiosity, what would you have done? Just the red 
flags and banners or would you have
gone further?

Tara