Ah, yes, cobranding... everything old is new again. We were doing this when
I started in 2001. There were several issues:

1. We weren't charging for it; it was just an added value service. Based on
all the bells and whistles, and even the minimum HTML (which at the time was
five templates requiring extensive coding and tweaking, all which had to be
redone every time the library changes its website, plus all the funky
library coding that we stumbled into) it would have cost us 6000 hours a
year to deliver to every library in California. (I know: we could use
library students or volunteers! Uh huh...) I don't think we could make it
cost-effective as a national funded service, at least not in scale to
address our funding issues. It's very boutiquey, very maintenance intensive,
and requires talking to webmasters with no clue what they are doing. When
our funding had a steep cut the last time (2002) I stopped the service.

2. It creates a branding problem for LII to have a million quasi-LIIs
running around. We ran into this in several situations.

3. It still requires that your users jump into a separate portal to do their
search, even if it looks like your stuff on the outside.

The number of libraries that tell me they'd love a service but they just
can't pay for it is pretty high... at least with "links on a page" I have a
few interested customers, probably more in the public library arena? When I
talked about it in PLA, hands popped up all over the audience, and I have a
real-world customer interested. I keep thinking the content and presentation
could be managed through a tool such as Media Manager, which I use on my
blog to present Amazon content...

Karen

>
> Another option is one that I think you already do and that is to wrap an
> organization's branding around your licensed content:
>
>  * Have the organization set up a domain name service entry that
>    points to your server (e.g. resources.library.oh.us => 64.142.8.101)
>
>  * Get from the organization an HTML template of how they would like
>    LII content to appear.  This is most likely just their existing
>    website template.
>
>  * Add code/configuration to your server that recognizes when the
>    requesting URL is 'resources.library.oh.us' and present LII content
>    within the organization's template rather than your default template.
>
>  * Add statistics and customization options to taste, bake at 350 for
>    thirty minutes, and serve with vanilla ice cream
>
> To most everyone in the world it looks like the organization's own
> content.  Only someone who traceroutes the URL or has Netcraft's browser
> plugin would notice that it isn't the organization providing the web
> service.  For me that would be a value-added service that I'd consider
> paying for (if I had a budget to do such things...).
>
>
> Peter
>
> On 3/28/06 5:33 PM, K.G. Schneider wrote:
> > The library I've been talking to has said they are interested in showing
> LII
> > content on their site. I have spoken briefly with their developers and
> > indicated an interest in doing this, and even sent PDFs displaying our
> table
> > structure internally. In turn, I've asked them what they would expect to
> see
> > on their site. URLs? Links to LII content? Parsing-in of categories?
> > Mini-descriptions, like titles plus the first ten, sort of like pulling
> in
> > an RSS feed?
>
> - --
> Peter Murray                       http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/
> Assistant Director, Multimedia Systems  tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338
> OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information Network   Columbus, Ohio
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