[WEB4LIB] RE: Yahoo-OCLC toolbar

[Ross Singer]

I'm not sure if this reply was intended for comment as well, but I
wanted to make sure it was understood that I came not to bury
Caesar but to warn you that he might be bringing back to you and
your patrons something other than they were expecting.  Caesar is
sneaky like that.

Actually, I find the Google/Yahoo functionality amazing.  That's
why I'm trying to use it.

-Ross.

On Wed, November 17, 2004 5:49 pm, Jim Campbell said:
> I have no particular wish to leap to the defense of Google, Yahoo
> or OCLC.
> There's plenty wrong with all this and they're all quite capable
> of
> defending themselves (though if they'd like to send me a little
> remuneration
> ...).
>
> In fairness though, if you look at the Open WorldCat FAQ you'll
> learn that
> both Google and Yahoo are in the process of crawling WorldCat to
> add data.
> They're working at different rates and no doubt in different ways.
> Until
> they're done, you're going to see plenty of differences between
> Google and
> Yahoo and not just beacuse of different search algorithms, and
> they're both
> almost always going to pull up fewer results than a native search
> of
> WorldCat. Incidentally, you'd also learn that OCLC intends to
> FRBRize the
> whole thing, though they don't say when.
>
> So dump on them for releasing their wine before its time (though
> they were
> getting so many uses they clearly decided they were filling a
> need), dump on
> OCLC for not being clear about the commercial side (at some point
> there's
> going to be a charge, probably folded into your WorldCat
> subscription), dump
> on OCLC for limiting the amount of searchable data (try to find a
> DVD), but
> let's leave some things uncriticized until the project is done and
> we can
> give it a fair test.
>
> I'd like some changes and I agree with the earlier comments that
> RedLightGreen is a more interesting product for the future of
> libraries, but
> getting information about library holdings into the major search
> engines is
> worthwhile too as helping to ensure that libraries have a future.
> In the
> meantime, if you really don't like the way it works, you should
> persuade
> your library either to opt out or to get an opac link in there.
>
> - Jim Campbell
> Campbell at Virginia.edu
>
>
>
>
>



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