There is no such thing as a zero-cost lunch; but there is such a thing
as a freedom lunch. I concur with Karen that (once again) much
confusion is being generated here by the English language's lamentable
use of the same word "free" to mean too such different things.
-- Mike.
On 19 May 2011 16:01, graham <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Replying to Jonathan's mail rather at random, since several people are
> saying similar things.
>
> 1. 'Free resources can vanish any time.' But so can commercial ones,
> which is why LOCKSS was created. This isn't an insoluble issue or one
> unique to free resources.
>
> 2. 'Managing 100s of paid resources is difficult, managing 1000s of free
> ones would be impossible'. But why on earth would you try? There are
> many specialized free resources, only a few of which are likely to
> provide material your particular library wants in its collection. Surely
> you would select the ones you want, not least on grounds of reliability.
> And on those grounds (longevity and reliability) you would end up using
> Gutenberg in preference to any commercial supplier (not that I'm
> suggesting you should)). Selection of commercial resources is done at
> least in part by cost; selection of free ones can be done on more
> appropriate grounds.
>
> 3. 'There is no such thing as a free lunch'. Who said there was? But
> resources which can be used freely have advantages over ones that can't.
>
>
> Graham
>
> On 05/19/11 15:44, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>> Another problem with free online resources not just 'collection
>> selection', but maintenance/support once selected. A resource hosted
>> elsewhere can stop working at any time, which is a management challenge.
>>
>> The present environment is ALREADY a management challenge, of course.
>> But consider the present environment: You subscribe to anywhere from a
>> handful to around 100 seperate vendor 'platforms'. Each one can change
>> it's interface at any time, or go down at any time, breaking your
>> integration or access to it. When it does, you've got to notice (a hard
>> problem in itself), and then file a support incident with the vendor.
>> This is already a mess we have trouble keeping straight. But.
>>
>> Compare to the idea of hundreds or thousands or more different suppliers
>> hosting free content, each one of which can change it's interface or go
>> down at any time, and when you notice (still a hard problem, now even
>> harder because you have more content from more hosts)... what do you do?
>>
>> One solution to this would be free content aggregators which hosted LOTS
>> of free content on one platform (cutting down your number of sources to
>> keep track of make sure they're working), and additionally, presumably
>> for a fee, offered support services.
>>
>> Another direction would be not relying on remote platforms to host
>> content, but hosting it internally. Which may be more 'business case'
>> feasible with free content than with pay content -- the owners/providers
>> dont' want to let us host the pay content locally. But hosting content
>> locally comes with it's own expenses, the library needs to invest
>> resources in developing/maintaining or purchasing the software (and
>> hardware) to do that, as well as respond to maintenance issues with the
>> local hosting.
>>
>> In the end, there's no such thing as a free lunch, as usual. "Free"
>> content still isn't free for libraries to integrate with local
>> interfaces and support well, whether that cost comes from internal
>> staffing and other budgetting, or from paying a third party to help. Of
>> course, some solutions are more cost efficient than others, not all are
>> equal.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> On 5/19/2011 9:31 AM, Bill Dueber wrote:
>>> My short answer: It's too damn expensive to check out everything that's
>>> available for free to see if it's worth selecting for inclusion, and
>>> library's (at least as I see them) are supposed to be curated, not
>>> comprehensive.
>>>
>>> My long answer:
>>>
>>> The most obvious issue is that the OPAC is traditionally a listing of
>>> "holdings," and free ebooks aren't "held" in any sense that helps
>>> disambiguate them from any other random text on the Internet.
>>> Certainly the
>>> fact that someone bothered to transform it into ebook form isn't
>>> indicative
>>> of anything. Not everything that's available can be cataloged. I see
>>> "stuff
>>> we paid for" not as an arbitrary bias, but simply as a very, very
>>> useful way
>>> to define the borders of the library.
>>>
>>> "Free" is a very recent phenomenon, but it just adds more complexity
>>> to the
>>> existing problem of deciding what publications are within the library's
>>> scope. Library collections are curated, and that curation mission is not
>>> simply a side effect of limited funds. The filtering process that goes
>>> into
>>> deciding what a library will hold is itself an incredibly valuable
>>> aspect of
>>> the collection.
>>>
>>> Up until very recently, the most important pre-purchase filter was the
>>> fact
>>> that some publisher thought she could make some money by printing text on
>>> paper, and by doing so also allocated resources to edit/typeset/etc.
>>> For a
>>> traditionally-published work, we know that real person(s), with
>>> relatively
>>> transparent goals, has already read it and decided it was worth the
>>> gamble
>>> to sink some fixed costs into the project. It certainly wasn't a perfect
>>> filter, but anyone who claims it didn't add enormous information to the
>>> system is being disingenuous.
>>>
>>> Now that (e)publishing and (e)printing costs have nosedived toward $0.00,
>>> that filter is breaking. Even print-on-paper costs have been reduced
>>> enormously. But going through the slush pile, doing market research,
>>> filtering, editing, marketing -- these things all cost money, and for the
>>> moment the traditional publishing houses still do them better and more
>>> efficiently than anyone else. And they expect to be paid for their
>>> work, and
>>> they should.
>>>
>>> There's a tendency in the library world, I think, to dismiss the value of
>>> non-academic professionals and assume random people or librarians can
>>> just
>>> do the work (see also: web-site development, usability studies, graphic
>>> design, instructional design and development), but successful
>>> publishers are
>>> incredibly good at what they do, and the value they add shouldn't be
>>> dismissed (although their business practices should certainly be under
>>> scrutiny).
>>>
>>> Of course, I'm not differentiating free (no money) and free (CC0). One
>>> can
>>> imagine models where the functions of the publishing house move to a
>>> work-for-hire model and the final content is released CC0, but it's not
>>> clear who's going to pay them for their time.
>>>
>>>
>>> -Bill-
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Andreas Orphanides<
>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 5/19/2011 7:36 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I dunno. How do you assess the whole realm of proprietary stuff?
>>>>> Wouldn't the same approach work for free stuff?
>>>>>
>>>>> -- Mike.
>>>>>
>>>> A fair question. I think there's maybe at least two parts: marketing and
>>>> bundling.
>>>>
>>>> Marketing is of course not ideal, and likely counterproductive on a
>>>> number
>>>> of measures, but at least when a product is marketed you get sales
>>>> demos.
>>>> Even if they are designed to make a product or collection look as
>>>> good as
>>>> possible, it still gives you some sense of scale, quality, content, etc.
>>>>
>>>> I think bundling is probably more important. It's a challenge in the
>>>> free-stuff realm, but for open access products where there is
>>>> bundling (for
>>>> instance, Directory of Open Access Journals) I think you are likely
>>>> to see
>>>> wider adoption.
>>>>
>>>> Bundling can of course be both good (lower management cost) and bad
>>>> (potentially diluting collection quality for your target audience).
>>>> But when
>>>> there isn't any bundling, which is true for a whole lot of free stuff,
>>>> you've got to locally gather a million little bits into a collection.
>>>>
>>>> I guess what's really happening in the bundling case, at least for free
>>>> content, is that collection and quality management activities are being
>>>> "outsourced" to a third party. This is probably why DOAJ gets decent
>>>> adoption. But of course, this still requires SOME group to be willing to
>>>> perform these activities, and for the content/package to remain free,
>>>> they
>>>> either have to get some kind of outside funding (e.g., donations) or be
>>>> willing to volunteer their services.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
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