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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