[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Feature inquiry

[Jason Etheridge]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:31 AM, Deanna  Frazee
<dfrazee at ci.killeen.tx.us> wrote:
> I love LibraryThing, but it's value is as a personal tool.  In my mind,
> a library's catalog is a tool for the masses, and therefore should not
> work the same way.

I don't think anyone has suggested that LibraryThing would work as a
library catalog, but it is an example of a "community" with incentives
that _works_.  None of our traditional library catalogs out there has
community now.

> I can see no reason for the masses to provide their own cataloging.  It is just a constant recreation of the wheel.
> Instead, take an existing record and modify it for your own use, e.g., copy cataloging.

That's what sharing is for--taking what is out there and mixing and
matching it.  I don't think anyone is advocating that users create
entire bib records like library catalogers do.  It's fine to have seed
data to play with.  But you don't need perfection.

And speaking of bib records, you'd have a lot more mix and matching
(and innovation) if they were in a different format _and_ modeled in a
way that was useful for folks outside of the library world.  But
that's a different problem altogether.

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com