On Fri, 10 Jul 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

> I think things like HealthLibrarian, Mednar, the previous work done by Index 
> Data with open content, the cooperative alluded to by OCLC and Ebsco, and 
> Serials Solutions Summon all represent a trend and/or opportunity for folks 
> like ourselves. Identify (open access) content, harvest it, index it, and 
> provide access to the index. If we were smart and cooperative, then we would 
> create these indexes in some sort of sharable format (like a specifically 
> structured Lucene index) allowing libraries to mix & match indexes to meet 
> local needs. I will collect and index philosophy and theology materials. MIT 
> will index computer science and mathematics. NCSU will collect engineering 
> and agriculture. Etc. Once we get this process under our belts we could then 
> go after the "closed" access content. By going through such a process we will 
> educate ourselves, improve our skills, become more self-reliant, and save 
> buckets of money in the long run. Not to mention provide value-added access 
> to the materials needed by our patrons.
>
> At the same time, I also understand many of us would rather pay for the 
> convenience of having this index packaged for us. If not, then there never 
> would have been a market of Poole's original periodical index.

Didn't someone suggest a while back that if every major research library 
were to chip in a fraction of an FTE, we could then pool resources and 
dedicate a couple of people to make stuff (I believe it might've been 
mentioned in the context of open source software) for the library 
community?

-Joe