Shaun Ellis wrote:

> [snip]
> For example, the reviews of books in the back of scholarly journals are
> obviously very different from the reviews on Amazon.  On that note, an
> Amazon-like review system, created for and by libraries, should not just
> be a carbon copy of Amazon's system (don't want to reinvent the wheel!).

Back from the conference that Art and I were talking about earlier in
this exchange.

A couple of specific thoughts (rather than the bigger musings from last
time) ...

Art indicated that it is not hard to capture the Amazon book reviews and
pull them into other environments (as with a variety of other components
of Amazon).

In the New York Times this morning was an article by John Markoff on the
pending IPO and its potential impact on Google and its culture called
"The Coming Search Wars".  A couple of statements to ponder that seem
relevant to this discussion:
    "The company has also been pushing hard to find new sources of
information to index, beyond material that is already stored in a
digital form. In December, it began an experiment with book publishers
to index parts of books, reviews and other bibliographic information for
Web surfers."
    "And Google has embarked on an ambitious secret effort known as
Project Ocean, according to a person involved with the operation. With
the cooperation of Stanford University, the company now plans to
digitize the entire collection of the vast Stanford Library published
before 1923, which is no longer limited by copyright restrictions. The
project could add millions of digitized books that would be available
exclusively via Google."

Just things related to the discussion that sometimes have a chilling
effect on our other activities.  I guess I should check the Stanford
catalogue before I digitize another book  :)

Walter Lewis
Halton Hills Public Library